Ventnor Heritage Centre

"To Collect, Record and preserve the rich heritage and history of Ventnor and surrounding villages, and share it with local and wider communities"

About Ventnor Heritage Centre |
Menu

About Ventnor Heritage Centre

Ventnor Heritage Centre, with its museum and archive, records how the town grew from a tiny fishing hamlet in 1840 to a fashionable Victorian resort complete with two railway stations and a pier, and how the villages of Bonchurch and St Lawrence became a favourite destination for writers and artists including Dickens and Macaulay. We have an extensive collection of photographs and documents, and books, prints and postcards are available for sale in our online shop.  We are open all year – for current opening times please see Ventnor Heritage Centre home page and see our Visit us page for location and admission charges.

The Heritage Centre is also the headquarters of the Ventnor and District Local History Society.

We are involved in community events, providing talks and slide shows on local history, and local heritage walks.  We also take part in the Ventnor Carnival and Fringe programme – in 2017 we collaborated with Ventnor Guitar Group on ‘Playing with History’, and in 2016 we showed  ‘Ventnor Unseen’,  a compilation of archive film clips with a soundtrack specially provided by local artists, which included  ‘Storm of 87’ written and performed by Paul Armfield.

One of the most interesting parts of our work is collecting local stories and memories;  if you would like to contribute your own stories or photographs, please contact us.

If you think you might be interested in working with us in the Ventnor Heritage Centre, please have a look at our Volunteering Opportunities – we would be delighted to  hear from you!

 

Exhibitions, stories, images . . .

Underley Shipwreck

The Underley was a full-rigged ship of 1202 tons built in 1866 in Lancaster.  She was owned by a  Captain Chambers who traded as the Liverpool and Lancaster Line between Britain and Australia. Under the command of Captain Tidmarsh, the vessel was outward bound from London To Melbourne when she came ashore between Bonchurch and Dunnose Point in a south-easterly gale on the night of 26th/27th September 1871. There were thirty passengers on board and a cargo of cotton, machinery and gunpowder. Passengers and crew were all saved except for a steward, Richard Tatton-Groves, who  reputedly re-boarded the vessel to save a pet bird and was swept overboard as the vessel started to break up.  Tugs stood by but they were unable to move her and she became a total loss. The Captain and the Pilot were both blamed for negligence at the Court of Inquiry. For many years a finely-carved name plate from the ship adorned a wall on the Landslip path.

Sidebar