News

Museum open on Saturday mornings

We are very pleased to announce that from Saturday 11 June 2022 the Museum will also be open on Saturday mornings, meaning that we are open four mornings each week – we hope to see you during the summer! Opening times 2022: Wednesday: 10 am – 1 pm Thursday: 10 am – 1 pm Friday:… read more »

St Lawrence Hall destroyed by fire 1951

The Isle of Wight Mercury’s headline of June 8th 1951 was ‘St. Lawrence Hall burnt out –Ventnor’s biggest ever blaze?’ The beautiful residence, built around 1886 in the style of a French Chateau, was once the home of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Jellicoe. Formerly called Inglewood, it had 24 bedrooms by this time, a fine… read more »

Victoria Street or Cheapside

In 1883, a brand new range of shops was opened on the east side of Victoria Street, Ventnor. The new range was presumably named after Cheapside in the City of London, for this was the street that, for centuries, had acted as a market, cheap deriving from ‘chepe’, the Saxon word for market. The individual… read more »

Society ‘Monthly Meetings’ are back!

We are very happy to announce the return of our regular monthly meetings, beginning in June. Our schedule of speakers for the rest of 2022 is below. As in the past, meetings will be at the Masonic Hall on Grove Road at 7:30-9:00 PM, on the last Friday of every month. There will be no… read more »

Fast Food more than one hundred years ago: Loosemore’s Stores

Tom Harry Loosemore was born in Newport and his wife, Alice, in Ryde, so both were Islanders. He entered the grocery business in Ventnor at Parker’s corner by taking over the store run there by Mr. Amis. By the late 1880s, though, he had relocated to the opposite side of the junction of Madeira and… read more »

Thomas Brading, builder and contractor

Thomas Brading came to Ventnor from Newport about 1881, initially as an apprentice to the firm of Messrs Silsbury and Kingswell, based on Grove Road. By the 1901 Census, Thomas is given as aged 35, with a wife Emily, aged 38, along with seven children, ranging in ages from twelve to one. He is described… read more »

Albert Bull’s funeral cortège, 1912

Albert Bull died at the age of 67, a prominent local figure with a lively interest in local affairs, becoming Chairman of the Ventnor District Council. He had been born in 1845, the son of William and Peggy Bull who lived at Rock Cottage on Belgrave Road. He started his working career assisting in his father’s business… read more »

Miss Margaret Catherine Dick, once of Madeira Hall, Bonchurch

Margaret Dick lived at Madeira Hall where she was attended upon, probably up to her death in March 1879, by Dr. James Mann Williamson who was a doctor who had come to the Royal National Hospital in 1868 and later set up practice in Ventnor in 1876. He prescribed various medication for her, whilst also… read more »

The YWCA in Ventnor

At one time, Prospect House (near the bottom of the south side of Grove Road), provided regular rooms for the YWCA, the Young Women’s Christian Association. It appears, ostensibly, to have been a boarding house, but its specific use may also have included being a hostel and club for working women. In the Ventnor Red… read more »

‘It Used to be Like This’

It Used To Be Like This is a classic memoir of life in Niton Undercliff in the early 1900s, written by George Roland Haynes (1906-1984). In his words: Already the lifestyle of my childhood is beyond the grasp of the young people of today . . . so I have written all that I thought should be… read more »

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