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"

Ventnor Heritage Museum |

Ventnor Heritage Museum

The Museum interior

The Ventnor Heritage Museum carries visitors back in time to explore Ventnor’s origins and the way it grew at phenomenal speed to become a premier Victorian resort town.

For opening times please see Ventnor Heritage Centre home page.

Exhibitions and displays

Our many display boards tell this story in words and pictures. There are finely detailed images from glass plate negatives that offer glimpses into vanished lives. There are reproductions of paintings from visiting artists of the time, fascinated as they were with the dramatic coastal scenery of Ventnor and the Undercliff and the people who came to visit. Other displays document the life-worlds of outlying villages in the earlier 20th Century, a time when horizons were limited and the pace of existence altogether different from today.

Visitors will also see showcases of artefacts that recover lost material worlds. There are even models of the town’s vanished railway lines. We play several DVDs that offer voyages back in time. Finally, you can absorb our Victorian kitchen and laundry exhibits, telling of an age when household chores took on a scale that is difficult for many to appreciate today.


Exhibitions, stories, images . . .

Olivia: Portrait of a Life

Olivia Parkes (1881-1962) was born in Walsall in the Midlands, but for many years lived a solitary life in a wooden hut in Myrtle Bay in Ventnor, where local people referred to her as ‘Britannia’, and her life has been a constant source of fascination to local people and visitors. This new exhibition for 2024, inspired in part by the ‘Olivia’ art installation by Teresa Grimaldi and Sarah Vardy shown at Ventnor Fringe Festival in 2023, features a model of Olivia’s home (Britannia’s Hut) and is accompanied by an extensive board display. A new book, 'Britannia, The Extraordinary Life of Olivia Parkes' is available to buy in the Ventnor Heritage Centre, or by post from our Online Shop.  

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