It was off this Esplanade that in 1782 went down the Royal George, one of our finest men-of-war, upset by a land breeze when heeled over safely enough, as was supposed, in calm weather. The story goes that a pig-headed officer of the watch would not attend to the carpenter’s report that she was filling; then naval discipline cost the loss of seven hundred lives. Great numbers of bodies came ashore at Ryde, to be buried under what is now a trim promenade. Others found a resting-place in Portsea Churchyard, where a monument to their memory stands under the noble tower of the new Church, so well seen from the railway as it enters Portsmouth. The catastrophe is best remembered by Cowper’s epitaph, “Toll for the Brave!” and by the narrative in Marryat’s Poor Jack. Less well known are Sir Henry Englefield’s lines, written when the graves could still be seen near the shore.
“Thou! who dost tread this smooth and verdant mead,
Viewing delighted the fair hills that rise
On either hand, a sylvan theatre;
While in the front with snowy pinions closed,
And thunders silent, Britain’s guardian fleet
On the deep bosom of the azure sea
Reposes aweful—pass not heedless by
These mould’ring heaps, which the blue spiry grass
Scarce guards from mingling with the common earth.
Mark! in how many a melancholy rank.
The graves are marshall’d—Dost thou know the fate
Disastrous, of their tenants? Hushed the winds,
And smooth the billows, when an unseen hand
Smote the great ship, and rift her massy beams:
She reeled and sunk.—Over her swarming decks
The flashing wave in horrid whirlpool rushed;
While from a thousand throats, one wailing shriek
Burst—and was heard no more.
Then day by day,
The ebbing tide left frequent on the sand,
The livid corpse; and his o’erloaded net
The shuddering fisher loathed to drag ashore.
And here, by friends unknown, unmarked, unwept,
They rest.”[1]
Another event in Ryde’s history was the landing here of the Empress of the French after Sedan. Her escape from Paris had been conducted by Dr Evans, the American dentist; then from Deauville, Sir John Burgoyne brought her across in his yacht through such stormy weather, that it had almost been forced to put back into some French port. At sunrise, a Ryde hotel close to the pier turned away two travel-worn ladies accompanied by a gentleman, who found refuge in the York Hotel. So the unfortunate Empress, with her small suite, could at last rest in peace. The first thing she did, Dr Evans tells us, was to seek comfort in a Bible that, by chance as she supposed, lay in the small top room given to this incognita. Charles X. on his final exile, had also made for the Isle of Wight, arriving off Cowes, but he does not seem to have landed there.
On the approach by sea, Ryde presents an attractive aspect, displayed as it is upon a hillside, with its steeply sloping streets, its conspicuous spires, and its fringe of handsome villas embowered in rich woods that enclose the town on either side. The most prominent landmark is the far-seen steeple of the parish Church in the upper part of the town, built after designs of Sir G. G. Scott, and ornamented with a fine show of modern art. Beside this stands the Town Hall, beyond which another church combines a Strawberry Hill Gothic effect, with a light colouring that at first sight suggests Oriental associations: it might do for a chapel to the Brighton Pavilion. Ryde has its fair allowance of churches and chapels of all denominations; but we need not look here for ancient dignity or picturesqueness, even the parish churches of such modern resorts as
Ryde or Ventnor having been originally chapels of ease to some now obscure metropolis inland. Georgian solidity or Early Victorian stucco are the highest notes of antiquity in this smart and cheerful town, which at the last census, taking in its outskirts, counted 18,000 inhabitants.
Church architecture, it may be said, is not the strongest point of the Island; though several of its churches have interesting remnants of Norman work; and I have heard of one native claiming for his parish steeple an unrecorded antiquity of more than 1600 years, in proof of which he showed the figures 1620 still legible on the fabric. One of the most notable ecclesiastical antiquities, Quarr Abbey, lies a pleasant couple of miles’ walk westward from Ryde. The way is by the adjoining parish of Binstead, with its modern Church preserving some fragments of the old one, originally built by the Abbot of Quarr, “because he would not have all his tenants and the inhabitants of Binstead come to trouble the Abbey Church.” A gravelled path and a lovers’ lane through a series of oak copses, giving peeps of the mainland coast, bring one in view of Quarr Abbey, whose ivied ruins are now to be restored. The name Quarr or Quarraria is said to come from the Binstead quarries of Upper Eocene limestone, that figures largely in Winchester Cathedral. The abbey was founded in the middle of the twelfth century by Baldwin de Redvers, in fulfilment of a vow made during his banishment for taking Maud’s part against Stephen, after which his head was lifted up again, so that he became Lord of the Island and Earl of Devon. He was the first to be buried here, as later were other persons of note, among them the Lady Cicely, second daughter of Edward IV., who had married a gentleman of the Island. Among the numerous traditions attached to the abbey, there is one that connects a wood called Eleanor’s Grove with the queen of Henry II., said to have been imprisoned here.
This was the second Cistercian house established in England, which before long absorbed so much of the Island, that the Abbot of Quarr became a petty prince. “Happy was that gentleman that could get his son to attend upon him,” says Oglander: such offices as treasurer, steward, chief butler, and rent-gatherer of the abbey being sought by the cadets of the chief families. But after the Dissolution it soon fell into decay, monuments and all being sold; and in the beginning of the seventeenth century, Sir John Oglander found that the very site of the church had already been forgotten by old men, even by one who remembered the days of its glory. At this time it had been bought for £3000 by Mr Fleming, descendant of the Dutch mason brought over from the Low Country by the founder to carry out the work. “Such,” moralises the knight, “is the inconstancy of Fortune, which, with the aid of her servant Time, pulleth down great things and setteth up poor things.”
Since then, the outlines have been more carefully uncovered, or traced, including part of a wall with which, by license of Edward III., this abbey was fortified against the attacks of sea-rovers, and of the French invaders who often assailed the Island. Among the old monuments recorded by Oglander was one to a “great Monsieur of France” slain here in Richard II.’s reign. The structure, of which some interesting fragments remain, was in part adapted as farm buildings, the refectory turned into a barn. But Quarr has now been bought by the community of French Benedictines that some years ago crossed the Channel to Appuldurcombe on the southern downs of the Island; and it is understood that they propose to restore the abbey as a congenial home. A swarm of nuns of the same Order has lately settled at Ryde, after a temporary residence at Northwood, near Cowes. Carisbrooke houses other foreign religieux, who have also a school at Ventnor. Thus the whirligig of time brings about its revenges, heretic England giving sanctuary to the churchmen of Catholic France.