history
Island Life - April/May 2010
Step back in time to
see Ventnor in all
its golden glory
By June Elford
It’s a bitterly cold day as I drive down
for the Society, what she thought of
above the town at around 244 metres,
the winding road into Ventnor but it’s
Ventnor today.
Ventnor enjoys a microclimate.
always exciting to see somewhere new, a
“The town is on the up a bit,” Fay says.
J. Redding Ware wrote in 1871 that
different place to add to the list of towns
“It went into decline after the railway
“the climate seemed most favourable,
and villages I’ve visited in the past year.
closed and with the demise of the pier,
and the neighbourhood most agreeable
After I park in the High Street I make
pleasure steamers stopped calling here.
to the invalid” and by 1829 the town
for Ventnor Heritage Museum on Spring
I would like to see more made of the
was experiencing a tourist boom. But so
Hill. The museum is housed in what was
Victorian status of the town – like a
many houses appeared on the terraces
originally a car showroom and the displays
Victorian week.”
down to the beach that Reverend Edmund
are full of information about Ventnor past
Cooke painted Ventnor in 1851 when it
Venables, an authority on architecture,
and present. There’s a wealth of photos, I
was a hamlet in the southern portion of
complained in his guide to the Isle of
particularly like those of the pier around
Newchurch parish. The painting shows the
Wight that the buildings were, “in every
1902 and the bathing machines on the
crescent-shaped beach with two thatched
conceivable style and every outrageous
beach in Edwardian times – this was
cottages and a fishing boat but in those
shape.”
Ventnor in its golden era.
days Ventnor had the ‘Crab and Lobster’
With this in mind, I wander along the
inn and a corn-mill worked by a stream
High Street towards Pier Street, pausing
that tumbled over the cliff to the shore.
at antique shops, tea rooms advertising
Sheltered by St. Boniface Down, the
toasted teacakes, crumpets and cream
The Heritage Museum also has a
selection of interesting publications for
sale written by the Society’s volunteers. I
asked Fay Brown, secretary and researcher
54
highest point on the Island towering
teas and looking at an assortment of
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