history
Island Life - April/May 2010
privately owned shops you often find in towns
of this size. I dawdle at Ventnor Rare Books
before moving on to Alexandra Gardens, built
in 1884 on the site of the old watermill where
Edward Elgar and his bride Alice spent their
honeymoon at villa Number Three.
The Rene Howe walk to the Esplanade is in
memory of a teacher and local historian and
on the way down I pass the Winter Gardens,
named by the winner of the competition the
council ran in 1936 to find a suitable name for
their new recreational outlet.
The old mill stream flows through the
picturesque Cascade Gardens, designed by
Edgar J. Harvey in 1903, and down to the
Esplanade where the water is used in the
eco-friendly loos built under a sedum roof.
Boats bob up and down in Ventnor Haven
opened in 2003 on the site of the old harbour
and Southern Water’s Seaclean works are
Ventnor suffered heavily from wartime raids
tastefully disguised by a bandstand and
because of the early warning radar station
look-out tower.
on the top of St. Boniface Down. Houses and
I look for the iron rings in the sea wall that
shops in North Street and the High Street were
were used to secure ropes to the bathing
destroyed in a ‘hit-and-run’ attack in 1942 and
machines and search the beach for the Ventnor
in another attack in 1943, seven people were
diamonds Jenkinson mentioned in his 1879
killed. After one raid Lord Haw Haw announced
Practical Guide to the Isle of Wight. Sadly, the
on the radio that there had been “a great
Royal Victoria pier was demolished in 1993.
German victory of military target