Isle of Wight

by A. R. Hope Moncrieff

From Quarr Abbey, one can stroll on to Fishbourne at the mouth of a creek called the Wootton River, which, a mile or so up, at Wootton Bridge is crossed by the road from Ryde to Cowes, passing presently behind the grounds of Osborne. Wootton is another of the oldest Wight churches, still preserving some features of the time when it was built by one of the Lisle family (De l’Ile) who took their name from this Island, and gave it to Dame Alice Lisle, the victim of Judge Jeffrey’s bloody assize. Holding on up the wooded bottom of Wootton River, one reaches the village of Haven Street, from which an hour’s walk leads back to the southern outskirts of Ryde, where all but the name of St John’s Park is now overspread by brick and stone. The way by road gives a fair notion of the Island scenery on this side; and might be very pleasantly extended by lanes and field-paths, copses and commons, seaming and roughening the three mile belt between the sea and the Chalk Downs to the south.

But the many rambles that may be taken here-abouts are the business of guide-books; and the high-roads leading out of Ryde need not be pointed out to its crews of coach excursionists, and to passengers on the motor omnibuses that start here for different parts of the Island, some faring as far as Shanklin and Blackgang Chine. For the present let us leave roads and railways, to stroll along the shore to Seaview, which, at the north-eastern corner, makes a sort of chapel of ease to Ryde, as Paignton to Torquay or Westgate to Margate.

This gives another very pleasant hour’s walk, to be taken along the sea-wall that continues Ryde’s Esplanade. On the land side the way is much shut in by park woods and castellated villas, but it has an open view over the Solent, across which at night gleam the myriad lights of Portsmouth and Southsea; daylight shows this strait enlivened by all kinds of shipping, and often glorified by the spectacle of a British fleet, as sometimes by international naval encounters in peace and courtesy. Our modern ships of war may make a more impressive display, yet no longer such a picturesque one as when a century ago one visitor could tell how he saw the whole Channel filled by a convoy, several hundreds strong, so that “the blue waters in the distance were almost hidden by the snow-white cloud of sails.” The pictorial place of these sails, indeed, is often taken by the racing yachts, which run all to sail; and “a sail is one of the most beautiful things which man ever invented!” So exclaims Mr George A. B. Dewar, whose “Pageant of the Sea” papers in the Saturday Review give us Turneresque pictures of this landlocked waterway:—

In autumn the sea and landscapes of the Isle of Wight, towards evening and in very still weather, seem to belong to some enchanted country. The hills of the Island, seen from the water, grow utterly unsubstantial then. They turn dove-coloured, and so soft and light in their appearance that they might, to a stranger to the place, pass for clouds on the horizon. The sea, with the mild sun on it, is emerald; and the band of colour that adjoins it to the north, given by the wooded shores of Hamble and Southampton Water, is a splendid purple. At other times, on an autumn evening like this, but with some imperceptible difference in the atmosphere, the faint outlines of hills far beyond Portsmouth and its land forts, have the peculiar appearance of being partly covered with a thin coating of stained snow. Every shade of blue and green touches these waters between mainland and island in early autumn as in summer, often changing with a changing sky from minute to minute.... Not all the illusions of this sea are kept for the hush of sundown and the shade of coming night. The sea blooms of the Solent, films and hazes, at all seasons glorify and mystify every ship they touch, clumsy coal barge, harbour-dredger, graceful racing yacht.

More than half-way on our path starts up Puckpool or Spring Vale, a row of seaside lodgings nestling under the protection of a fort that makes a link in Portsmouth’s fortified enceinte. Here the shallow shore spreads at low water a wide stretch of sand, so firm that horses as well as children can disport themselves upon it; and it seems as if the nearest fort could almost be reached on wheels. The path holds on by a strip of meadowland; and thus we come to Seaview, that has overlaid the old name of Nettlestone Point.

Seaview, indeed, was first Seagrove before it became a flourishing family bathing-place, with the unusual setting of woods so close down to the water’s edge that one may lie in a boat and hear the nightingale almost overhead; but these groves tantalise the landlubber by a crop of forbidding notices to trespassers. It has a chain pier of its own, and a regular service of steamboats from Southsea, that run on to Bembridge. This pier, with the hotel behind, splits the place into two separate sections, marked by their architecture as belonging to different strata of pleasure-seeking. The part nearer Ryde is the true old Seaview of wandering rows, bow-windowed lodging-houses, and modest refreshment rooms. On the east side of the bay has sprung up a newer, smarter, redder bit of esplanade, making a pretty contrast to its dark green background. A private road leads to this end, which, else, at high tide is cut off, so that the butcher or greengrocer may be seen delivering his wares by boat in quite Venetian manner. There are sands for children, and rocks for scrambling, and a shallow beach for launching canoes on these safe waters, where the red sails of the Bembridge Yacht Club make dots of colour, as do the tents here taking the place of bathing-machines. Another peculiar feature is the diving-boards anchored out at sea, since the tide, creeping up to the Esplanade garden gates, woos paddlers rather than swimmers. Seaview, in short, holds itself something out of the common in the way of bathing-places, dealing with strangers rather in the wholesale way of house-letting than the retail trade of apartments.

Beyond the broken point, where one seems to catch Nature in her workshop, kneading clay into firmer forms, a rough walk along the shore of Priory Bay leads on to St Helen’s, reached inland by the road through Nettlestone Green. Once clear of houses, we plunge among the rank greenery of the Island, too much monopolised here by the grounds of the Priory, which preserves the name of a colony of monks swarmed over from France to St Helen’s in early Plantagenet days. This was one of the properties bought by Emmanuel Badd, who, teste Sir John Oglander, began life as a poor shoemaker’s apprentice at Newport, “but by God’s blessinge and ye loss of 5 wyfes, he grewe very ritch,” rose to be High Sheriff of Hants, and was buried under an epitaph in Jacobean taste, ending

So good a Bad doth this same grave contain,
Would all like Bad were that with us remain!

But at St Helen’s we have rounded the corner of the Island, which we may now survey from another line of operations.