Objects between Brading and Newport.
Our course will be for the first three miles due west. On the north side is NUNWELL, the oldest seat in the island, having been awarded by William the Conqueror to the ancestors of Sir William Oglander, the present proprietor. Noble specimens of every kind of forest-tree are to be found in the park: particularly oaks, several of which are many centuries old, the family having long employed every possible means of preserving these venerable chiefs of the grove. The house (a large, plain building,) stands at the foot of the down, and therefore is not seen from the road: but the surrounding park, woods, and farms of the estate, spread before the eye in a most beautiful style ...
"With swelling slopes and groves of every green."
ASHEY SEA-MARK is very conspicuously seen, being seated on a high down, three miles from Brading, four from Ryde, and five from Newport: it is a perfectly plain, triangular object, erected in the middle of the last century to assist pilots in navigating St. Helen's anchorage.
On the south side of the down appears the pretty village of NEWCHURCH, in the direct road from Ryde to Godshill, &c. The situation of the Church is rather romantic, being nearly on the edge of a remarkably steep sand-cliff, through which the road is cut, feathered with brushwood and several overhanging trees.
If the tourist be returning to Newport, he will pass through the long village of ARRETON, whose church stands at the foot of the down of that name: it is of considerable antiquity,—and though its style of architecture is certainly heavy, is upon the whole both picturesque and singular. Its chief internal decoration is a beautiful mausoleum to the memory of Sir Leonard W. Holmes, bart.: and in the churchyard is buried the young woman celebrated for her piety in the popular tract of "the Dairyman's Daughter."