Our first Society Meeting for the new year will be on Friday 26th January 2024, when Jeffrey Mazo will be giving a talk entitled Listening to the Enemy: Ventnor’s Wrens, Bletchley Park and the Secret War. The meeting will be at Yarborough Masonic Hall Grove Road, Ventnor 7:30 – 9:00 pm, 26th January 2024 All… read more »
Christmas 1913 in Ventnor by Michael Freeman. There was entertainment all round in Ventnor that December according to The Mercury newspaper. Films at the Electric Picture Palace on High Street. More films at the Hippodrome on the Esplanade, where the youngsters could also roller skate. Then, on Evening of 22nd December, there were illuminations and… read more »
Southern Television is Broadcast to Ventnor, by Michael Freeman. ITV’s Southern Television started broadcasting to the South of England on the evening of 30 Aug 1958, and the article highlights some of the shows viewers enjoyed over the years included The Army Game, Cheyenne, Take Your Pick, and children’s programmes like Noddy. Popular performers including… read more »
Ventnor Quarry, site of the town’s first railway station. By Michael Freeman. The article includes contemporary photographs of the entrance to the new railway tunnel through St Boniface Down, and of the the station site with construction underway (shown here). PDF of the article available to read here: Ventnor Quarry, site of the town’s first… read more »
Millmore’s Garage. By Michael Freeman. Matthew Martin Millmore started this garage business after WW2, and expanded it with his sons Alan and Joe. In 1958, Joe emigrated to Australia where his sister Mary Millmore (later Sheehan) lived. The Millmore family were supporters of Holy Trinity Church where Matthew was a churchwarden and his wife Rose… read more »
Ventnor Park in the Early Days by Colin Beavis. The history of Ventnor Park from its early years to the present, including a photograph showing the first houses built on what became Park Avenue, and another of the bandstand, which was moved to the Park from Ventnor Pier in 1903. PDF of article available here… read more »
Dean Crossing and the new Whitwell Road. The new Whitwell Road linking the village to Ventnor was opened in 1890, and seven years later the railway arrived in Whitwell as part of the Newport, Godshill and St Lawrence Company’s branch from Merstone. A photo from 1920 shows Dean Crossing, with the pedestrian bridge and the crossing-keeper’s… read more »
The Buddle Inn, Niton Undercliff, by Michael Freeman. It is thought that the Buddle in was originally a farmhouse, but the photograph here shows it in around 1910 when it had been a drinking house for some three centuries, and the licensee was probably John Cotton. In the 1830s it provided contraband liquor from the… read more »
This month’s talk will feature Andy Butler and Alan Clark presenting The Almost Magic Lantern Show, using scans from our collection of glass slides accompanied by recent photographs of the same locations to create a journey through time along the Undercliff from Blackgang to Shanklin. (This is a slightly revised version of the Ventnor Fringe… read more »
Wheeler’s Bay to Monk’s Bay coastline, by Michael Freeman. An image from an Edwardian post card shows the coastline at Wheeler’s Bay and the cliffs beyond, the photograph taken from the site of Ventnor Gas Works. The view changed fundamentally with the construction of the revetment in the 1980s which extended to Horseshoe Bay and… read more »