QUARR ABBEY,
The most considerable ecclesiastical establishment ever founded in the Isle of Wight, which had, like every other part of Great Britain, previous to the Reformation, its full share of monastic and other religious institutions. This was among the first settlements of the Cistercian Order in England, having been built in the 12th century; was most amply endowed, and had several illustrious persons buried in the chapel, to whose memory sumptuous monuments were erected; but after its dissolution, the property was purchased by a merchant of Southampton, and the sacred edifice reduced for the value of the bare materials.
The merchant's son afterwards sold the estate to the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Thomas Fleming, with whose descendants it still remains. Some of the outer walls are still extant, and must have circumscribed at least 20 acres. A foot-path passes through the grounds to Ryde, &c.
Of this once-magnificent establishment little now remains; merely portions of the appendant offices, which were converted into barns, &c., for farm-purposes. What was spared in the moment of ruthless spoliation, lay long buried under heaps of rubbish and weeds—till a few years since, when one of the occupiers, with laudable zeal, rescued from total annihilation the few remaining fragments, which are now open to the view of strangers.
The other Religious Structures
Scattered through the island were ... a Priory at St. Helen's; one at Appuldurcombe; one at St. Cross, near Newport; and another at Carisbrooke, vestiges of which may still be traced; together with a great number of oratories, chantries, chapels, and religious houses, amounting in the whole to 70 or 80, exclusive of the regular parish-churches;—and yet scarcely any of these interesting monuments have survived their reckless doom to ruin and neglect; not even a spiry fragment sufficiently large or romantic to form a pleasing subject for the pencil, invite the mind to contemplation, or aid the poet's retrospective muse.
BINSTEAD, to which there is a good foot-path from Quarr through the woods, is about a mile westward of Ryde. Several genteel residences, mostly built in a pleasing cottage-style, adorned by groups of trees and shrubs, are scattered over a wide space of broken ground, where extensive stone-quarries have been worked for many centuries. It is a favorite walk with the inhabitants of Ryde, across the fields to the church (not seen from the road), which has lately been considerably enlarged and improved. The names of the respective villas will be found in the List of Seats.