Island Life Magazine Ltd October/November 2009 | Page 42
life
ISLAND HISTORY
Photo: The Royal Victoria Arcade, St. Thomas's Church
Royal George Memorial Gardens on the
(the hovercraft slipway was originally
the largest public buildings in the Island,
Esplanade.
used for landing horse-drawn carriages)
and I realise that the town owes a lot to
or they suffered the indignity of being
three people, Player, Brigstocke and Lind,
six miles of sparkling golden sand and
piggy-backed across the mud to the
men who had the vision to make Ryde
the kiosk at the entrance to the pier has
shore. Ryde’s pier is the fourth longest
into a resort as popular as Brighton in its
buckets and spades and all the clobber
in the country but the tramway has gone
heyday.
you need to spend a day on the beach.
and the steam trains have been replaced
The Six Wonders of the Isle of Wight are
by ex-London Transport Underground
walk round the town that there’s a pride
painted in lurid murals at the entrance to
trains.
in Ryde and that the buildings are in a far
But away with sad memories, Ryde has
the railway station – a sad-looking cow
A reminder that the pier brought
And Ryde today? It’s obvious when you
better state in spite of the recession. The
standing in the sea represents Cowes –
prosperity to Ryde is the Prince Consort
recreational facilities are good and near
but on the Eastern Esplanade there are
building in St. Thomas’s Street, built
the boating lake the sea walk has been
gay umbrellas, the flower beds are ablaze
in 1846 as a club house for the Royal
raised to enable wheel chair users to see
with colour and the Roadtrain, packed
Victoria Yacht Club. Further up the street
over the wall. The Town Council also
with visitors, trundles off to Puckpool
I see the terrace of ten elegant town
tries to make sure that Ryde has plenty of
Park.
houses built in 1826-29, now Brigstocke
publicity.
I walk towards the pier, started in 1813
Terrace and named after Captain Thomas
George Brannon wrote of Ryde in 1824,
as a project by local gentry and with
Brigstocke who was linked to the Player
“Indeed, the rapid increase of Ryde
investment money from some of the
family by marriage.
itself, and the many tasty villas which
town’s tradesmen and though it cost far
It was George Player who built St.
are continually rising in its vicinity, prove
more than when it was initially proposed,
Thomas’s church on the site of an earlier
how much the situation is admired, and
it became a fashionable promenade and
church constructed by his grandfather,
leaves little doubt of its shortly becoming
meeting place. Later the pier was joined
a church that had fallen into disrepair
a fashionable watering-place of the first
by the Pier Tramway and then by a railway
by the 1960s but has fortunately been
resort.” And there you have it.
pier with the three independent piers
rescued and turned into a heritage centre.
joined at both the sea and the land end.
Before the pier was built a wherry would
I finish my discovery of Ryde in Lind
Street, named after a wealthy landowner
sail in as far as possible and transfer
called Dr. John Lind. Here is the imposing
the passengers into a horse and cart
Colonnade and the Town Hall, one of
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My thanks to Roy Brinton and Joan
Watson for helping me to discover Ryde.