"To make the past present, to bring the distant near . . . to call up our ancestors before us with all their peculiarities of language, manners, and garb, to show us over their houses, to seat us at their tables, to rummage their old-fashioned ward-robes, to explain the uses of their ponderous furniture . . . " Thomas Babington Macaulay describing what the study of history can do (written in 1828)
Please get in touch if you have any questions. Send us an email to ventnorheritage@btconnect.com or drop in to the Heritage Centre, or use the contact form below.
Tel: 01983 855407 (but please note we have no answerphone, and can only pick up phone when the Heritage Centre is open).
"I was born at Beach Cottage, Castlehaven, Niton Undercliff in the year nineteen hundred and six. Beach Cottage was built for my father by my grandfather of the local hard stone which we call Rag Stone. . . It was a most excellent cottage." These are the words George Roland Haynes used to begin his memories of life in Niton Undercliff in the last century; the picture here is a sketch he made of Beach Cottage. We have now published his memories as a book, ‘It used to be like this . . .’ available from Ventnor Heritage Centre Publications.