Over the last 170 years there have been various different businesses located at 86 High Street in Ventnor. In the early 1850s, Moses Hibberd opened a shop there as a pork butcher, poulterer and fruiterer. One of fifteen children, he had started in Ventnor in 1845 as a steward at Steephill Castle where he was… read more »
There was a long history of piggeries in the grounds of the Royal National Hospital in Ventnor, with the animals being fed on the abundance of hospital food waste. Along with the considerable supplies of vegetables and fruit produced in the grounds, it proved vital in the later years of the Great War when food… read more »
Henry Milligan, invariably known as Donkey Milligan, was probably the most prominent of the donkey-chair proprietors who operated in Ventnor around the turn of the last century, regularly taking nursing home patients and other invalids on outings. He had taken over the business founded by his father in 1894. A carpenter by trade, Henry had worked… read more »
In 1959, members of the Blake family, longshoremen at Ventnor over several generations, dismanted Britannia’s Hut, the wooden structure on tall stilts that over many years formed the home of Miss Olivia Parkes (locally known as Britannia). The hut had originally been built for the Undercliff Swimming Club in the 1880s, was bought by the… read more »
The house known as Puckaster sat on higher ground above Puckaster Cove, not far from Niton Undercliff. It had been built in the early 1820s as a summer home for a wealthy merchant, James Vine Esq. By 1925, when it figured in a set of sale particulars, it had been transformed into a small country… read more »
Timothy White’s was once a familiar sight on British high streets. In Ventnor, there was a Timothy White’s chemist at 12 High Street by the early 1900s, located in the new block known as Clarence Buildings, with the National Telephone Company’s call office housed above the shop. The shop remained at 12 High Street well after… read more »
In December 1927 a blizzard raged across a large part of southern England, right from Kent to Cornwall. One to two feet of snow fell in that period, but in exposed places, huge drifts formed. The Regel Bus (driven by Fred Lawson) became snowbound in Wroxall on its trip back to Shanklin from Ventnor, at… read more »
Bernard Augustus Beavis was a Captain with the Clan Line Shipping Company, plying between England and the rest of the world. He was born in Whitwell in 1908, the son of Frank & Edith Beavis (nee Slaughter), one of twelve children and spent most of his life at sea, with the latter years as Master of… read more »
The road from Belgrave Road to the Esplanade was named Bath Road. The reason for this was as a result of the common belief in Victorian times that salt water was a cure for everything from bruises to hysteria. A ‘bathhouse’ had been constructed at the western end of the esplanade for patrons of the… read more »
We regret that our monthly Society Meetings are suspended during the pandemic. We hope to resume them as soon as possible.