Local history
Owning the Island :
The Story of Squire Ward By Julia Courtney
William George Ward was larger than life in every way . His impressive intellect made him the equal of some of the greatest thinkers of his day - the age of Darwin , Gladstone and Cardinal Newman . He was a great friend of Alfred Lord Tennyson .
Physically , William George Ward was big , weighing over 20 stones , and extremely clumsy ; he summed up the contrast between his mental and physical attributes with the phrase : ‘ I have the mind of an archangel in the body of a rhinoceros ’. Ward also owned about one fifth of the land surface of the Isle of Wight . This came about because a huge estate , which included most of the town of Cowes and extensive land around Freshwater and Totland , had been built up by his grandfather George Ward ( 1751-1829 ) known as ‘ King Ward ’ because of his immense power on the Island . It was passed on via ‘ King Ward ’ s ’ two sons until William George Ward inherited it in 1849 . Born in 1812 , William George , or W . G . Ward as he was widely known , had led an eventful life before becoming an Island landowner . He was a brilliant mathematician and philosopher , very singleminded , and as Alfred Lord Tennyson was to say , ‘ grotesquely truthful ’ which sometimes made it difficult for him to form emotional relationships . He loved music , but was unable to make sense of poetry , art or history .
Probably today W . G . Ward might be diagnosed as a personality on the Aspergers / autism spectrum , but these terms were unknown in Victorian times , and his family and friends seem to have accepted , as one of his daughters put it , that ‘ he was utterly unlike anyone else .’ W . G . Ward ’ s relentless focus on working out his ideas to extreme
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