The author of Tom Jones wrote of it about the middle of the eighteenth century as follows: “This pleasant village is situated on a gentle ascent from the water, whence it affords a charming prospect. Its soil is a gravel, which, associated with its declivity, preserves it always so dry that immediately after the most violent rain a fine lady may walk without wetting her silken shoes. The place ... is so shaded with large and flourishing elms that its narrow lanes are a natural grove or walk, which in the regularity of its plantation vies with the power of art, and in its wanton exuberance greatly exceeds it.”
We have quoted Fielding because if one substitute town for village, the description which he penned a century and a half ago is fairly accurate as regards the general characteristics of Ryde of to-day. We have, however, known it rain so that a lady could not immediately afterwards have ventured out for a walk “without wetting her silken (or other) shoes.” But one must allow the famous novelist some latitude.
There are practically no buildings of any interest except All Saints’, erected from designs by the late Sir Gilbert Scott, which, though a modern church, is worth a visit. In the immediate vicinity, however, a couple of miles or so westward stands Quarr Abbey, or what remains of the ancient foundation, plus a rather unpicturesque farmhouse built from the debris. There still stands, however, a huge barn, said to be the ancient refectory. The Abbey is reputed to have been the first Cistercian foundation in England, although at least one other claims that distinction. Quarr, its name was derived from the quarries in the immediate neighbourhood, was established in 1132 by Baldwyn de Redvers, who was afterwards made Earl of Devon, and given lordship of the island. To fill the institution a party of Norman monks of the Benedictine Order were brought over from Savigny, but a few years later it was given over to the Cistercians. De Redvers was a generous founder, for to the Abbey, which he had dedicated to the Holy Virgin, he gave “broad lands,” and, his good example being followed by his successors, at last the Abbot of Quarr became one of the great personages of the Island, and was twice Warden of the Wight. The chapel, which was from all accounts “a richly architectured and elegant fane,” contained some fine and beautiful tombs. Notably those of the founder and his wife, William de Vernon, in his day a Lord of the Island, who bequeathed, what was in those times, the enormous sum of £330 for the erection of “stately and adequate memorial to himself.”
Here, too, was buried the Princess Cecilia Plantagenet, daughter of Edward IV, who was a beauty of her age, and after the marriage of her sister Elizabeth to Henry VII became Lady Welles. The second husband of this unconventional Princess was a commoner, one Master Thomas Kyme or Kyne, to whom she is stated to have borne two children. After her second marriage she retired to Standen, and lived there for a period of three years (1504–7), dying at the age of thirty-eight.
The memorials of all these were defaced or utterly destroyed at the time of the suppression of the religious houses.
The Abbey was fully fortified in the reign of Edward III by Royal licence, as it had been attacked in a previous reign by the French pirates who made periodical descents upon our coasts, and was on account of its great wealth “in treasure as well as lands” liable to future attack. The stout stone wall which was built to encircle it enclosed an area of no less than forty acres. Fragments of the sea gate, which had a portcullis, and the wall can still be traced; as may also some of the foundations of the Abbey itself which have of recent years been excavated.
COWES. SUMMER
On the suppression of the monastic institutions by Henry VIII, Quarr passed by purchase into the possession of two brothers by the name of Mills, belonging to Southampton, who promptly set to work to pull down the Abbey, Church, and other monastic buildings. In the reign of James I, Sir Thomas Fleming, Lord Chief Justice of England, purchased the estate from descendants of the Mills family. So great was the destruction wrought by the vandalistic tendencies of the latter, that we are told “even in the reign of Charles I there was little more remaining to be seen of this great Abbey and its dependent buildings than at the present day.”
Hard by the Abbey grounds is a delightful woodland spot known as Eleanor’s Grove, where tradition asserts the Queen of Henry II, who was a prisoner in the Abbey, lies buried in a golden coffin, which, though often sought for, has never yet been discovered!