"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)
Members of Ventnor & District Local History Society receive newsletters through the year. Past newsletters are available here.
You can join the Society at the Heritage Centre, or by coming along to one of our monthly meetings, or by post or bank transfer (please email us for details if you wish to use bank transfer). Please make cheques payable to Ventnor & District Local History Society.
"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.