Island Life Magazine Ltd October/November 2009 | Page 40

life

ISLAND HISTORY

Photo: The well known boating lake, Ryde

RYDE - The TOWN
“Look upwards,” Roy Brinton, a local
historian, says. “That’s what I tell
people when we do a tour of the town’s
buildings. It’s cheaper than looking in the
shop windows.”
We’re in Ryde High Street and seriously,
Roy’s right. Look above the plate-glass
windows and lettering on the shop fronts
and you discover old tiled roofs and
dormer windows, some dating from the
16th century like ‘Sandyhill’s Bargain’, the
oldest building in Ryde.
“The word ‘bargain’ is dialect for a
small holding,” Roy explains. He points
to Hargreaves, a shop with a red brick
frontage and two windows. “This was
a farmhouse, it’s timber framed with
mathematical tiles on the front elevation.
Originally, it was called Dagwells and in
1846 it was the ‘Prince of Wales’ public
house with a secret staircase used by
smugglers to hide in the attic.”
Roy tells me that the town grew out of
two villages, the one on the hill called
Upper Ride, the other one by the sea
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Article by June Elford
called Lower Ride. The hamlets were
separated by two fields, Node Close and
Little Node Close, and a pack-way across
the fields was laid with stones to prevent
horses slipping in the wet weather.
I look at everything with a new eye. The
Castle Inn on the corner of John Street
has neatly rounded walls and here’s the
Star Inn where the composer and pianist,
Franz Liszt, stayed, a building that used to
stretch as far back as George Street when
it was a staging inn in the 17th century.
The original building was demolished in
the 1870s.
Above Peacocks shop there are
classical pediments on the windows
and a balustrade and nearby I notice
the columns on the front of a Victorian
hall built around 1880. But there’s not
time to explore the side streets, instead
we leave the oldest part of Ryde and
walk down to St. Thomas’s Square. This
was formerly the village green and a

field at the side was the site of the
first Theatre Royal where Mrs Jordon, a
famous Regency actress, gave her last
performance and Ellen Terry appeared for
the first time.
We’ve come into Union Street and Roy
reminds me that while the High Street has
300 years of history, Union Street is just
one period. Henry Player bought part of
the Manor of Ride from Sir John Dillington
in 1705 and it was his grandson, William,
who in 1780 laid out Union Street on
an old pack-way across Node Close and
divided the land on either side into 31
plots which were offered on lease.
William’s idea was to make Union
Street, named to commemorate the
Union between Great Britain and Ireland
in 1801, a high class residential area and
until 1804 it was known as Middle Ryde.
Union Street is crowded with
holidaymakers but you can’t miss Robert
Yelf’s Hotel, opened in 1810, with its
imposing front entrance and an attractive
courtyard and archway to one side of the