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 »
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 »
The Millmore family came to Ventnor from Cowes in 1929. Their garage at the top of the High Street was started by Matthew Martin Millmore straight after the 1939-45 war. He had previously been running carrier vans daily between Ventnor and Ryde. The High Street garage proved successful and was soon expanded with the help… read more »
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 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 »
We are delighted to announce that Ventnor Heritage Centre and Museum is now open for the 2022 season. During the summer the Museum will be open three mornings a week, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, from 10 am – 1 pm each day. We are hoping to extend these opening hours once we have more volunteers… read more »
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 »
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 »
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 »
Our latest publication is a new and expanded edition of George Roland Haynes’s It Used To Be Like This, the classic memoir of life in Niton Undercliff in the early 1900s. In his words: Already the lifestyle of my childhood is beyond the grasp of the young people of today . . . so I… read more »