Island Life Magazine Ltd October/November 2009 | Page 42

life

ISLAND HISTORY

Photo: The Royal Victoria Arcade, St. Thomas's Church

Royal George Memorial Gardens on the

(the hovercraft slipway was originally

the largest public buildings in the Island,

Esplanade.

used for landing horse-drawn carriages)

and I realise that the town owes a lot to

or they suffered the indignity of being

three people, Player, Brigstocke and Lind,

six miles of sparkling golden sand and

piggy-backed across the mud to the

men who had the vision to make Ryde

the kiosk at the entrance to the pier has

shore. Ryde’s pier is the fourth longest

into a resort as popular as Brighton in its

buckets and spades and all the clobber

in the country but the tramway has gone

heyday.

you need to spend a day on the beach.

and the steam trains have been replaced

The Six Wonders of the Isle of Wight are

by ex-London Transport Underground

walk round the town that there’s a pride

painted in lurid murals at the entrance to

trains.

in Ryde and that the buildings are in a far

But away with sad memories, Ryde has

the railway station – a sad-looking cow

A reminder that the pier brought

And Ryde today? It’s obvious when you

better state in spite of the recession. The

standing in the sea represents Cowes –

prosperity to Ryde is the Prince Consort

recreational facilities are good and near

but on the Eastern Esplanade there are

building in St. Thomas’s Street, built

the boating lake the sea walk has been

gay umbrellas, the flower beds are ablaze

in 1846 as a club house for the Royal

raised to enable wheel chair users to see

with colour and the Roadtrain, packed

Victoria Yacht Club. Further up the street

over the wall. The Town Council also

with visitors, trundles off to Puckpool

I see the terrace of ten elegant town

tries to make sure that Ryde has plenty of

Park.

houses built in 1826-29, now Brigstocke

publicity.

I walk towards the pier, started in 1813

Terrace and named after Captain Thomas

George Brannon wrote of Ryde in 1824,

as a project by local gentry and with

Brigstocke who was linked to the Player

“Indeed, the rapid increase of Ryde

investment money from some of the

family by marriage.

itself, and the many tasty villas which

town’s tradesmen and though it cost far

It was George Player who built St.

are continually rising in its vicinity, prove

more than when it was initially proposed,

Thomas’s church on the site of an earlier

how much the situation is admired, and

it became a fashionable promenade and

church constructed by his grandfather,

leaves little doubt of its shortly becoming

meeting place. Later the pier was joined

a church that had fallen into disrepair

a fashionable watering-place of the first

by the Pier Tramway and then by a railway

by the 1960s but has fortunately been

resort.” And there you have it.

pier with the three independent piers

rescued and turned into a heritage centre.

joined at both the sea and the land end.
Before the pier was built a wherry would

I finish my discovery of Ryde in Lind
Street, named after a wealthy landowner

sail in as far as possible and transfer

called Dr. John Lind. Here is the imposing

the passengers into a horse and cart

Colonnade and the Town Hall, one of

42

My thanks to Roy Brinton and Joan
Watson for helping me to discover Ryde.