Three generations of the Richards family Crop of Bodleian Library 014642324 e-text. Licensed under Creative Commons CC BY -NC-SA 2.0: England and Wales. No commercial re-use. Any re-use must follow same license.

seeing the hill-sides of the four G's, viz. the 'Glorious Glory of the Golden Gorse'

the heating of the water in the tea urn after it was brought to the table by dropping
into the water a red-hot iron block

He held the most uncompromising views as to controlling the sea

William Spindler Crop of Bodleian Library 014642324 e-text. Licensed under Creative Commons CC BY -NC-SA 2.0: England and Wales. No commercial re-use. Any re-use must follow same license.

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Ventnor, looking west Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight, 1910

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Ventnor, looking west Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight, 1910

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So grateful was he to our climate ... that he resolved to spend £100 for the benefit of the town, and after deep consideration decided that it should take the form of a book, This appeared in 1877, under the title "A few remarks about Ventnor and the Isle of Wight, Bournemouth, Torquay, Brighton, Weymouth, Jersey, and Guernsey," and a thousand copies were printed and circulated broadcast amongst the inhabitants of Ventnor. In language kindly severe, he dwelt on the natural beauties and advantages of the Undercliff as compared with the other places before mentioned, and then lashed the local authorities and ratepayers for not developing them. Here is his own language in the closing chapter:—

"Ventnor, indeed, would be perfection, if it had more trees, and if the other deficiencies I have spoken of were remedied. If the inhabitants resolved on mutual efforts to develop the natural capabilities of their place, it could not fail to rise beyond the reach of successful rivalry. Nor must they think that they can be allowed to indulge any longer in the carelessness that they have hitherto shown. The 'good old time,' when at a seaside place the sea along sufficed, when people submitted to temporary inconveniences, and even enjoyed them on account of their novelty, is gone for ever. Greater fastidiousness. enlarged wants, and better taste are the characteristics of the present generation. If the inhabitants of Ventnor refuse to satisfy these modern requirements, there is no doubt that another town, 'Undercliff,' will spring up between St Lawrence and Niton. This neighbourhood, and especially the Old Park estate, presents a magnificent field for the enterprises of a capitalist. Although the land near the shore at this spot partakes of the treacherous nature of the whole Undercliff, it may easily be rendered safe by erecting groynes. Taking Bournemouth as a pattern, it might then become the site of a first-rate watering place, uniting Torquay and the green foliage of Bournemouth with the shelter, the climate, and the open sea of Ventnor. Ventnor at present claims the privilege of being the capital of the Undercliff, but if it continues to neglect its duties, another leaseholder will step in, for the natural advantages of the Undercliff are so great, and in our northern latitude confer such as boon on mankind, that Ventnor cannot be allowed to prevent either the invalid or the pleasure seeker from enjoying them."

Naturally the publication of this work caused a great sensation.
- Death of Mr. William Spindler, page 3, IWCP, 7th December 1889 (reproduced as fair usage, Isle of Wight County Press Archive archive.iwcp.co.uk).

Ventnor. Oct. 27
LOCAL BOARD
A vote of thanks was then unanimously passed to Mr. W. Spindler for the pamphlet he had printed respecting the town and liberally circulated, and this was accompanied by an expression of regret at his leaving the Island.
The Hampshire Advertiser (Southampton, England), Saturday, October 27, 1877; pg. 8; Issue 3273. 19th Century British Library Newspapers: Part II

There is an insect that people avoid
(Whence is derived the verb ' to flee');
Where have you been by it most annoyed ?
In lodgings by the Sea.
- Lewis Carroll, A Sea Dirge

William Spindler - from Allerlei-Gereimtes und Ungereimtes, 1873

In politics, he did not agree with Bismarck, and as proprietor of a powerful newspaper, in which he ventilated his views, he was subjected to much annoyance and the espionage of the Iron Chancellor. Indeed this was ultimately the cause of his leaving the Fatherland, and through overexertion, feeling that his health was failing, he sought a more genial climate.
- Death of Mr. William Spindler, page 3, IWCP, 7th December 1889 (reproduced as fair usage, Isle of Wight County Press Archive archive.iwcp.co.uk).

Mitternacht war's, stürmisch, schaurig /
als ich müd' und matt und traurig
Ueber manch' ein früh'res Streben /
hatt' gegrübelt hin und her

Herr William Spindler klopft seine alten Schubfächer aus und wendet seinen Papierkorb um, und sammelt all die Sächelchen, die da herausfallen, zu Ehren von Johann Jacoby. Armer Johann Jacoby, Gott schütze ihn vor seinen Freunden.
- Demokratisches Allerlei von Herrn William Spindler, Die Grenzboten: Zeitschrift für Politik, Literatur und Kunst (pp 304-313, Volume 2; Volume 32, 1873).

Berlin, den 31. Dezember 1879.
Königl. Polizei-Präsidium.
Verbotene Druckschrift.
Auf Grund des § 12 des Reichsgesetzes gegen die gemeingefährlichen Bestrebungen der Sozialdemokratie vom 21. Oktober 1878 wirb hierdurch zur öffentlichen Kenntniß gebracht, daß die im Jahre 1873 im Vertagt von Elwin Staude hierselbft erschienene nichtperiodische Druckschrift: „Allerlei Gereimtes und Ungereimtes" von William Spindler nach 8 11 des gedachten Gesetzes durch die unterzeichnete Landespolizeibehörde verboten ist. Berlin, den 31. Dezember 1879. Königl. Polizei-Präsidium. Bekanntmachungen der Kaiserlichen OberPost-Direktion zu Potsdam.
- Amtsblatt der Königlichen Regierung zu Potsdam und der Stadt Berlin, Stück 2, 9 Jan, 1880, page 13

Mr Spindler, after asking, "Now, what was it that forced me to love the place (Bournemouth) at first sight?" says "Its natural attractions have been developed by man to the utmost. And by what means? Well, by the simplest and in the result the most wonderful:—By planting trees, trees, trees, everywhere and everywhere."

• Ancient harbour wall remains - ( Spindler's Follies ) shows the fragmented remains of the harbour wall Spindler had built at Binnel Bay.
• Undercliff footpath walk to the beach - St Lawrence shows the woodland path from Undercliff Drive to Binnel Bay, as it was in August 2013.
• St Lawrence to Binnel Bay footpath - 2014 Landslip shows what remains of the same path after the landslips of early 2014. It's just as well a town was never built on this massively unstable terrain.

I must sympathize with the Social Democrats, especially in view of the inaction and corruption of the nobles. These "little people", after all, want only what nature confers: equality. The Republican form of government is the only rational one. I can never understand the foolish people, the fact that they continue to tolerate us.

She moved into the Langham Hotel, London in 1867. There she wrote in bed, by candlelight, with the curtains drawn and surrounded by purple flowers. She ran up huge hotel and florists bills, and commanded soirees that included soldiers, politicians, literary lights (including Oscar Wilde, Algernon Swinburne, Robert Browning and Wilkie Collins), and artists (including John Millais)
- Wikipedia

Sir Warwick Tonkin of Teignmouth, died about 1860. Connected with the shipping business, a magistrate, friend of Louis Napoleon and built a theatre for the town "before 1823". Within thirty years of his death he was said to be making ropes of sand on the beach (Parry: History of Teignmouth, 1910). 
- Devon & Cornwall Notes & Queries - Volumes 24-25 - Page 214, 1951 

The beach is also haunted by Sir Warwick Tonkin, who, the old people will tell you, frequents the shore making ropes of sand. Why this poor gentleman is thus employed I cannot say. He was a resident in the town during the "forties and fifties," a gentleman of fashion, a friend of Louis Napoleon, who interested himself in many schemes for the benefit of the place; and if he suffered from a good deal of unnecessary vanity, did not deserve the fate that is meted out for Tregeagle on the Cornish coast.
- Teignmouth, Its Past History and Present Interests, Beatrix F. Cresswell - 1901

Death of Sir Warwick Hele Tonkin
This gentleman died on Friday evening at the advanced age of 86. The deceased was the son of the late Mr. Warwick Hele Tonkin, of Exeter, and married the only daughter of the late Mr. Thomas Mitchell, M.D., formerly of Chudleigh, who died about five years ago without issue. Sir Warwick was a major in the army, but never, we believe, saw much active service. Subsequently, he was a barrack-master at Exeter for a number of years. In 1826 he received a gold medal of the 1st class, from Charles X. of France, for aid in a case of shipwreck, and for similar services in 181 he was in 1838 nominated Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He was a magistrate and deputy-lieutenant of the county of Devon. In politics the deceased was a Whig, and a warm supporter of the late lord-lieutenant of the county. He was also Lieutenant-Colonel of the 1st Devon Brigade of Volunteer Artillery, and took a very warm interest in the volunteer movement. The flags of the vessels in the harbour and at different parts of the town were hung at half-mast, out of respect for the deceased knight, who was of a kind and genial disposition, which had endeared him to a large circle of friends. He had lived at Teignmouth for about 40 years.
- Western Morning News
- The Morning Post (London, England), Tuesday, September 15, 1863; pg. 5; Issue 28001. 19th Century British Library Newspapers: Part II.

William de Tracey, one of the murderers of St. Thomas a Becket in 1170. After the crime, he fled to his manor at Woolacombe Tracy. Now he rides furiously up and down the beach at Woolacombe, wailing, or he wanders there and around Braunton Burrows, making a rope of sand. “But whenever the rope is nearly woven, there comes a black dog, with a ball of fire in his mouth, and breaks it; so the penance is never at an end.” (Devon… , Lady Rosalind Northcote, p. 222).

Whit-Hat: A real man who lived in the last century; as a ghost he haunts the sand dunes of Braunton Burrows, wearing a great white hat, and spins ropes of sand. (Mr Vernon C. Boyle, Transactions, Devonshire Association, Vol. LXXXIV, p. 296

White-hat. Written by Vernon C. Boyle, in 1949 : — " My father, Vernon Boyle, b. 1859, used to speak of a mythical character, Old White-hat, who ranged the beach along the Northside, calling for a passage to Appledore. He wore a great white hat. This was always at night. He seemed to have been doomed to make ropes of sand in among the dunes. Capt. J. R. Pile, aged 61 in 1949, has the following version: ' Jack the Whit-hat was about the Crow by night. He wore a white hat with a lantern lashed to it. He seemed to be looking for something. When he hailed an Appledore boat, “Hoy!”, people would never wait, but hurry away, for they believed that anyone who went ashore to Whit-hat would never get away alive. There is a woman in Bideford today who is the grand-daughter of Jack the Whit-hat, and possibly she can throw light on the story.’

- LEGENDS AND TRADITIONS, page 296, Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art, Volumes 84-86, 1952

FEATHERSTONE'S DOOM

TWIST thou and twine! in light and gloom
A spell is on thine hand;
The wind shall be thy changeful loom,
Thy web the shifting sand.

Twine from this hour, in ceaseless toil,
On Blackrock's sullen shore;
Till cordage of the sand shall coil
Where crested surges roar.

'Tis for that hour, when, from the wave.
Near voices wildly cried;
When thy stern hand no succour gave,
The cable at thy side.

Twist thou and twine! in light and gloom
The spell is on thine hand;
The wind shall be thy changeful loom,
Thy web the shifting sand.

1831.
* The Blackrock is a bold, dark, pillared mass of schist, which rises midway on the shore of Widemouth Bay, near Bude, and is held to be the lair of the troubled spirit of Featherstone the wrecker, imprisoned therein until he shall have accomplished his doom.
[First printed in Records of the Western Shore, 1832.]
- page 15, Cornish Ballads & Other Poems (Robert Stephen Hawker, pub. London : J. Lane, 1908, Internet Archive cornishballads00hawk).

Once more at the Black Rock of Widemouth Bay. It has its legend, which shall be gossiped forth by way of epilogue. In a hovel, above the footbridge over the brook that comes brawling down the hollow of Wansome Combe, dwelt, long years ago, a lone man — Featherstone — a stranger in the land — sluggard by day, poacher by night, and a wrecker at all times. Not a creature lived with him save a mute lurcher, that possessed alike the illegitimacy, the ferocity, and the taciturnity of its master. Both were savage, solitary, and fearless. It is false to say that sin, in loneliness of being, is wont to be terror-stricken — that a throb of penitence at once mollifies and terrifies the adamantine obduracy that steels the nerve of determined guilt. Saint and sinner possess the same attribute of valour that, diverging into different channels, flows yet from the same source. Brute courage is absolute, and personal bravery is an accessory of the perfectibility of mightiness in good and evil. One great man — and a great man too, is an exceptional case — Cromwell: he proved this deficiency, personally, at Edge Hill and Marston Moor, and morally at Whitehall, when he was frightened unto the very death, and beheld an imaginary hell as he memoried the reproaches of a dying daughter. John Maria Featherstone was harder, not of heart, but of nerve. He did not say in the whining tones of hypocrisy with the Puritan Malignant, ' Let us seek the Lord,' although above his pallet was suspended a terra cotta image of the 'Madre di Dio,' with the 'Bambino.' The spirit of transcendentalism that was blasphemously dishonest in the Malignant Regicide was superstitiously honest in the Roman wrecker, demon though he was. The blenching Malignant, not equal to the moment, used the mask of sanctity as the means to a present end of this world; the braver wrecker, in his iniquity rising superior to the moment, invoked superstition as a preservative in the unknown future of another world. Each appeal to the transcendental, however, comprised the principle of a permission to do wrong. 'Let us seek the Lord '— Ave Maria ! — and then to business.

A piercing nor'-wester swept the line of coast from Hartland to Pentyre Point, blowing dead on the land. The spray, lashed up by the storm wind from the seething sea, darkened, and became as a mist over the blanched waters. Through this blight of gloom was seen looming the indistinct hull of a vessel with sails flickering and masts overboard, rolling more and more heavily now on the crest of surges, and again in the trough of waters, as she was propelled onwards by the rising tide. The disabled ship had run down the coast past Morwenstow and Bude Haven, driven on by the irresistible current that set in towards the precipice of Melluach. Lurching round the point of the rocks at the Salt House, she got into the sea of warring breakers in Widemouth Bay. Coming broadside on, the vessel drifted steadily— on, on — until at last, upborne by a gigantic swell, she rushed forwards with the breaking crest, and quivering in every timber, as if conscious of her fate, was dashed by the broken surf upon the jagged ridges of the Black Rock. There she struck. Then the leaping seas deluged over the parting ship; masses of water curling up poured in and over, and a huge wave at last sweeping the decks from stem to stern, she crashed as it were with a shriek, and no longer like a thing of life,' her shivered timbers were wrenched and cast about in the caldron of raging waters.

True to his calling, John Maria, with his dog, was at hand. The keen eye of the wrecker scanned the line of breakers, and wandered minutely over the huge masses of timber that were tossed and grinding amongst the many crags. Human beings were seen for a moment and as suddenly disappeared, but not a voice was heard save the din of the tempest, clanging in a hurricane of sound over earth and ocean. One person— one alone, a woman — was clinging to a broken spar. The piece of wreck came nearer and nearer ; it struck and was fastened in a fissure of the rock; a hand still clutched convulsively, and on that hand rings of jewels gleamed brightly. Brightly, also, gleamed the hatchet of John Maria. A smart chop, the hand was severed, and with a piteous cry the woman fell back into the yawning chasm of waters. The wave was scarcely coloured by a faint tinge of blood: another surged over, and one unit more was withdrawn for ever from the sum of human existence. So — it was done. The bloody fingers were wrapped in a handkerchief; the lurcher carried it in his mouth to the hovel, and John Maria Featherstone knelt before the idol of terra cotta. 'Ave Maria! Judica me Domine.' Tradition has it that he was judged verily and indeed; that his spirit, by the decree of an avenging Nemesis, is imprisoned by day within the Black Rock, and that at night it comes forth to coil a rope of sand wearily and eternally on the very spot of his crime. But it would be unbecoming to trench upon the metrical province of the Minnesinger of the western shore.

Twist thou and twine! in light and gloom
[RS Hawker poem snipped]
- ROBA DI MARE, Baily's Magazine of Sports and Pastimes, July 1871, pages 220-227, Vol. XX (Internet Archive bailysmagazines18unkngoog).

The date of the death of "Cruel Coppinger" is not known. The stories of Coppinger given by Mr. Hawker were not the product of his imagination, but were genuine traditions, though wide of the truth. Probably, earlier stories of Featherstone the smuggler, attached to Coppinger who inherited his terrible renown.
-  page 157, Banckes Family of Exeter and Heavitree, JS Atwood, The Western Antiquary, May-June 1892

80. Spinners of Sand (XXV, p. 213, par. 178 ; XXVI, p. 28, par. 26). — Another "Spinner of Sand" to that mentioned in the January issue, was a certain "Black" Petherbridge, who is said to haunt Petherbridge Rock, a high, solitary pile of rock on Widemouth beach, a few miles west of Bude. For his sins on this earth, his spirit is condemned to continually make ropes of sand each night, which each returning tide obliterates. This legend was told to me some thirty or more years ago, when I was staying at Widemouth, and remained in my mind as I happen to have been given the same name from a paternal grandmother, who by a coincidence used to speak of a wicked ancestor who she called "Black" Petherbridge. R. Petherbridge Mugford.
- page 89, Devon & Cornwall Notes & Queries, Volumes 25-26, 1953

119. Spinners of Sand (XXV, p.213, par. 178, XXVI, pp. 28, 89, pars. 26, 80). In the note No. 80 which refers to the solitary rock at Widemouth near Bude, I was very interested in the name given by the writer to this rock “Petherbridge Rock” for by such name it is quite unknown to me. My forebears and myself have had close association with the district over many years and I never heard the rock given any other name but "Black Rock" and the name of the man, whose spirit was doomed to haunt the rock and to “spin ropes of sand and bind them with beams of the same,” was Shepherd (or Shepheard) who once lived at Howard Barton near Stratton. Tradition said he had led a very wicked life in which smuggling was only one of his villainies. [author unfindable]
- page 236, Devon & Cornwall Notes & Queries, Volume 28, 1961 

Black Rock, Widemouth Beach © by High View, licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic licence (CC BY-SA 2.0).

The Legend of Blackrock

"Still at your labours, Featherstone?
Your prison of schist, so mournfully jutting
On Widemouth shore looks grim, as if shutting
Its secret safe where its clefts are entwined.
Is your spirit that here is still confined
Restless still as the grey waves plunging,
Working vainly as winds' fierce lunging,
To weave a web of the stubborn sand?"

"When the hot sun blisters must I weave them,
'Mid foulest storms I cannot leave them:
The baffling sands
    Slips as my hands
        Receive them!"

"Why do this penance, Featherstone?
What crime thus chains you to doom so tragic?
Were you a dabbler in Black Magic?
Did you sell your soul, as a Cornish Faust,
To the Evil One, that your peace is lost?
Was it thirst for knowledge, dark, unlawful,
That laid you under a curse so awful?
Or were you merely a common wrecker?"

"A wrecker I was! For my lights ensnaring,
For my gain obtained thro' a course unsparing,
I writhe in stress -
    Now of success
        Despairing!"

"Your torture must surely end, sometime, Featherstone!
This labour, though vain, must certainly hasten
The hour of release - 'tis meant but to chasten ....
What! At your last wreck, close to this shore,
You stood with a cable, while thro' the roar
Of wind and sea, the drowning, in anguish,
Called for your aid, and you let them languish?
Ah! 'Tis for this that you are now plagued?"

"Yes! And not till my stained dark soul I cover
With sand-robe made where their cries still hover,
Will my ghastly doom,
    In sun or gloom,
        Be over!"

- pages 70-71, The Awakening: Poems Newly Found, Jack R Clemo, 2003

Edna Lyall is partly to blame for having introduced this habit of torturing the poor hero both physically and mentally to such as fearful extent that the reader can only feel relief when the end of the third volume is reached.
- Daily News, 25 July, 1889

Smith was one of the most popular Evangelical writers of the 19th century, who used her "Christian principles as a protest against specific social evils in her children's books".
- Wikipedia

[She] won success and notoriety because of their "fast" heroines, young ladies with a taste for daring and rapturous flirtations in lush pastoral surroundings.
- Victorian Poetry, Volume 15, p79, 1977

Alma Lee and her baby

They have just passed the entrance-gates of Swaynestone — lonely gates, unfurnished with a lodge — and the waggon stops with interrupted music at some smaller gates on the other side of the road, where the upland still rises, not in bare down, but in rich meadow, to a hanging wood, out of which peeps dimly in the dusk a small white structure, built with a colonnade supporting an architrave, to imitate a Greek temple — Alma's home.
- The Silence of Dean Maitland 

The Temple, Swainston - see To see Swainston

Samuel Leigh 45 coachman
Anne (wife) 40
Ellen Leigh (daughter) 15

Exeter Guildhall

Exeter from Exwick

Exeter Cathedral

Topsham

Exmouth from Cockwood

Sidmouth

Branscombe

Beer Beach

Seaton Headland

Teignmouth and Shaldon

Torquay from the Bay

Berry Head

Brixham Trawlers

Northcote (Lady Rosalind Lucy Stafford Northcote), eldest daughter of the second Earl of Iddesleigh, died on 31st December, 1950, at her home at Upton Pyne. Greatly sympathetic towards the cause of kindness to animals, Lady Rosalind was a former vice-president of the Exeter and West Devon Branch of the R.S.P.C.A., chairman of Exeter Auxiliary branch and a group representative on the National Council of the Society. A film made on her estate was shown to the annual meeting of the Society in 1936. Part of the Society's propaganda, it was designed to help teach children a proper attitude towards animals. Her book on Devonshire was her best known literary work.
- page 12, Report and Transactions - The Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art, Volumes 82-83, 1950

Walter Raleigh statue, East Budleigh

Buckton Hill, north of Sidmouth

Exploring the Weston Plats
Care is needed at all times as the site contains old machinery and is bordered by steep cliffs. Please keep to the waymarked path around the site. There is no through access along the coast.

The tinted etchings, though these before us are, on the whole, well executed, are deformed by the tint: a glaring glaring purple, a green glow,, or a deep yellow hue, disguises instead of illustrating nature.

In the houses, he describes the paintings with much feeling and enthusiasm, and sometimes condescends to instruct us as an antiquarian and a naturalist; but in these departments, particularly the last, his success is not very considerable. He is evidently unacquainted with the subject, and he ought to have avoided such disquisitions.

On the whole, however, though little errors occasionally appear, the work is very entertaining. Indeed, natural objects described with fidelity and elegance will always interest and attract the reader, not rendered fastidious by fashion or affected refinement.
- The Critical Review, Or, Annals of Literature, Tobias Smollett, pub.W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1791, pages 184-189.

View inland from Yarmouth

View inland to downs from Freshwater Gate

Coastal arch at Freshwater

The Needles

The cliffs of Alum Bay

Scenery near Afton Down

Blackgang Chine

The Undercliff

Scenery near Shanklin

Foot of Luccombe Chine

Luccombe

Shanklin Chine

Cascade at Shanklin Chine

"Queen Bower", near Newchurch vertical scale of the hill considerably exaggerated

Carisbrooke Castle

Carisbrooke Castle gate

Shore at Osborne

Shalfleet Lake - Hassell admits to exaggerating the proportions

"Gurnet Bay" (Gurnard)

Unidentified scene

Hassell visits Stonehenge on the way home

• Tour of the Isle of Wight, John Hassell, printed by John Jarvis ; for Thomas Hookham, London, 1790: Volume 1 Internet Archive tourislewightdr00hassgoog, Volume 2 Google Books SYUuAAAAMAAJ).

We stood round the Needles, and lay to in Scratchel's Bay, which is the western end of the island. Here part of our company landed on the rocks, to take the diversion of shooting at their feathered inhabitants, which, in the months of May, June, and July, it is said, are incredibly numerous. Whilst my fellow travellers were thus engaged, I rowed out to catch a sight of the Lighthouse ... When I had got out to a sufficient distance, I made a sketch of the West end of the Island.

Scratchel's Bay ... Here we made a hearty meal, and enlivened the dreary scene with mirth and a bottle. We could not help observing that this is a spot by no means favourable to the talents of our London sportsmen, who were much decieved as to distance on the water. The birds, indeed, seemed aware of this error, and remained quietly on the rocks after being repeatedly fired at.

"Allum Bay and the Needles"

"West end of the Isle of Wight"

"Blackgang Chine"

Entrance into Newport

Medina River

Medina River

Newport, from Fairlee

"Keep of Carisbrook Castle"

"Carisbrook Castle"

"Carisbrook Castle"

Yarmouth Castle

"Cave at Freshwater"

"Distant view of St. Catherine's"

"Freshwater"

"Freshwater Gate and Main Bench"

"Path to Hermit's Hole"

"Culver Cliffs"

"Brading"

"Ride"

"Blackgang, looking to Sea"

"Chale Bay"

"St Catherine's"

"Knowles, looking West"

"Mirables, from Cripple Path"

"Steep Hill"

"Bonchurch Viillage"

"Luccombe Chine"

"Shanklin Chine"

Steephill is seated on a terrace near the foot of the great cliff. Some wood and much rich shrubbery grow round the house, and adorn the masses of rock, which everywhere start from the uneven surface. One of these, called the Devil's bridge, is in form, colour, and position, as romantic as can be conceived. It lies projecting nearly horizontally from a bank, is of a very great size, and the strata being of different hardness, the lower parts are so worn away, that the upper part overhangs like a vast cornice, and in this there is an excavation deep enough to afford room for a bench quite covered over head, and accessible by a rude staircase built against its flank. Ivy winds over its surface, and shrubs clothe its sides.
- A Companion to the Isle of Wight, John Albin, Longman & Co, 1823 (Internet Archive companiontoisleo00albi)

In the view of Steephill, is introduced a curious rock, called the Devil's Bridge. In a chasm of the rock, is placed a seat, the approach to which, is by a rude flight of sleps. From this situation, you overlook the house and grounds, and have a full sea view. The house is perfectly in unison with the grounds, and does great credit to the taste of its owner.
- A Tour to the Isle of Wight, Volume 2, Charles Tomkins, pub. G Kearsley, London, 1796 (Internet Archive atourtoislewigh01tomkgoog).

As though to omit no feature of natural beauty, nature has provided a freak of strata in the cliff north of the Castle, which has been christened by the unromantic name of "the Devil's Bridge." This projects horizontally from the cliff like a natural cornice, and being of a harder strata than that immediately below, there exists a cavern beneath large enough to allow of the construction within of a sheltered bench for the curious in search of the picturesque. Ivy winds about the sides of the cavern, and shrubs clothe the cliff above and around. There is a rude staircase by which the place is reached; and from this point the view of the rolling cliffs, and valleys, with the sea beyond, is remarkably fine. 
- Steephill Castle, Ventnor, Isle of Wight, the residence of John Morgan Richards, Esq.; a handbook and a history (John B Marsh, 1907, Internet Archive steephillcastlev00mars)

A distinguished journalist visiting her after the completion recently wrote for the Lady's Pictorial a description of Steephill which is quite comprehensive and explains its attractions and points of interest
...
"Part of the grounds are wild, and a fine effect is secured in one by a freak of the strata of the cliff projecting horizontally and known as the Devil's Bridge"
- Almost Fairyland, personal notes concerning the Isle of Wight, John Morgan Richards, pub. John Hogg, London, 1914

Historic map data is (© and database right Crown copyright and Landmark Information Group Ltd. (All rights reserved 2009). Low-resolution image reproduced for small-scale non-profit use under the terms described in the Old Maps FAQ.

Historic map data is (© and database right Crown copyright and Landmark Information Group Ltd. (All rights reserved 2009). Low-resolution image reproduced for small-scale non-profit use under the terms described in the Old Maps FAQ.

On the shore of this parish, are Jackman's Chine, Water-Gate Chine, Shrimp-Ledge Chine, Barns-Hole, Cowleaze Chine, Common Chine, and Kings-Gate Chine.

Grange Chine, sometimes called Jackman's
- Black's Picturesque Guide to the Isle of Wight, 1871
Below the village of Brighston is Grange or Jackman's Chine, a broad gorsy ravine, offering no very marked features
-  A handbook for travellers in Surrey, Hampshire, and the Isle of Wight, Richard John King, 1865
There is one called Jackman's Chine, which may be said to lead from the village to the bay.
- Nelson's Handbook, 1859
A stream passes through this place [Brixton] which takes its rise near Mottiston, and empties itself into the bay at Jackman's Chine
-  A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in All Parts of the World, John Pinkerton, 1808

They [chines] are six in number, — Jackman's, Water-gate, Ship-ledge, Barnes, Cowleaze, Grange, and Chilton

Ship Ledge (H 7 97 NE) corresponds to Shriptege Chine 1775 M, Strip Ledge Chine 1851 M; Tomkins (2.76) mentions Shrimp- Ledge Chine (1796) and Englefield (8) calls the chine Shriptedge. The preponderance of spellings containing an r seems to indicate that Shriptedge is the least corrupt form and that the name is a compound of the dialectal word shrip 'to clip a hedge' (also 'to cut or whittle away a piece of wood, to make chips'
- The place-names of the Isle of Wight, Helge Kökeritz, 1940

Historic map data is (© and database right Crown copyright and Landmark Information Group Ltd. (All rights reserved 2009). Low-resolution image reproduced for small-scale non-profit use under the terms described in the Old Maps FAQ.

Cowleaze Chine, Barnes' Hole (well worth the walk to see) and Grange Chine
- The New Portsmouth, Southsea, Anglesey, and Hayling Island Guide, 1859
Barnes Hole, between Cowleaze and Shripledge, is a vast chasm in the earth, with black gloomy sides, four hundred feet in height
- The History, Topography, and Antiquities of the Isle of Wight, William Henry Davenport Adams, 1856 
Barnes Hole is a remarkable cavern, of extraordinary height, and most gloomy aspect.
- Picturesque Illustrations of the Isle of Wight, Thomas Barber, 1834

The stream that flows through Shepherd's chine is said to have formerly entered the sea by Cowlease chine, but a shepherd desiring to secure the eels which were to be found in the mud at the bottom, cut through the soft and narrow barrier which divides the ravines and diverted the water, with the full intention of restoring the stream to its old bed wnen he had filled his creels, but heavy rains coming on, the brook soon deepened its new channel beyond the possibility of restoration, and has, by degrees, formed a new chine, named from its unintentional creator, leaving its former course deserted and dry.
- Jenkinson's Practical Guide to the Isle of Wight (1876, Internet Archive jenkinsonspract00jenkgoog)

Near Grange Chine is a cavern of considerable height, called Dutchman's Hole, from a Dutch galliot having been hurled into it
- Nelson's Handbook to the Isle of Wight, 1862 
Grange Chine Point, to the West of Jackmans, is also remarkable for a cave called the Dutchman's Hole, so named from a large ship of that nation running into it.
- A topographical and historical guide to the Isle of Wight, WCFG Sheridan, 1833 
Dutchman's Hole, near Grange Chine, so called from a large Dutch ship which ran into it 
- A New, Correct, and Much-improved History of the Isle of Wight, John Albin, 1795

One book especially ("For Richer for Poorer") brought out some of the most charming traits of the authoress; writing of the village of Shanklin, she delineates her characters with a wonderful delicacy of feeling—e.g., the disappointed curate, Harry Lamplugh (the Rev. C[harles] Hole.), then residing only a few yards from her. Again, she describes Mrs Jenkins, of the Old Library, and the little Jenkinses, the window of the room of the baker's house (Vine cottage) from which the village gossips could see all who came or went through the village street.
- Harriet Parr, Southland Times, Issue 14662, 6 June 1900, page 4

Shanklin Old Village, Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight, Jarrold & Sons, 1910

From the same high ground, they had their first glimpse of Whitburn village. It followed the course of the brook, between two slopes of down, where the water had worn a deep chine to the shore. It appeared from the distance a pretty paradise in a hollow, with a church-spire and red-tiled roofs amongst green trees—for there were trees all about the houses, and gardens with hedges of tamarisk down to the sea. The travellers approached it from the north-east, by a long winding road, and came first to the church and the ancient manor-house, now turned into a farmstead; then to the placid parsonage and a cluster of humble straw-thatched cottages, much more than half-buried in ivy-bushes; and, at a double bend of the road, where it began to climb the opposite hill, to the village proper. Here, on an elevated lawn, stood the chief hotel and a lowlier house-of-call nearly facing it, both thatched, like the cottages, as to their roofs, and as to their walls trellised with roses and myrtles, jessamine and virginian creeper. A splendid passion-flower festooned the front of the library and bazaar which had choice apartments to let up-stairs; and a thick-clustered vine was trained over the orthodox baker-and-grocer’s dwelling, the side window of whose parlour looked up the street, past the butcher’s open stall and a long interval of luxuriant hedge, to a few picturesque detached lodging-houses recently built upon the heights. Within view of this window (a rare look-out for village gossips) two roads struck off in opposite directions—one leading to the cliff, the shore, and the garden-gates of the modern lodgings, the other to tangled lanes and woods and fields, and the convenient old house which the curate had chosen for his new home.

Mary’s quick observant eyes made notes of a few gay figures pacing the green lawn of the hotel; of a group of loud-talking, amphibious men in the forecourt of the “Crab and Lobster;” of a quaint old philosopher, taking in the cheap novels and newspapers which garnished a rack outside the library door; of a couple of women with baskets exchanging news on the steps of the baker-and-grocer’s shop, where the errand-boy was putting up the shutters. Then the jaded horses slackened their pace to breast the hill, and quickened it again as the driver turned them off the main road into the rough track across the goose-green, which developed into a shady lane at the further side.
- pp 266-268, Volume 1, For Richer, for Poorer, by Holme Lee [pseud.] v.1.Lee, Holme, 1828-1900, Hathi Trust, Cat. 011405669.

To the north-east of the church stands the Manor House,familiar to the readers of Holme Lee's "Against "Wind and Tide,"square built, with high peaked roof, heavy cornice, and long easements of the early part of the last century.
- p 47, A guide to the Undercliff of the Isle of Wight, Shanklin and Blackgang, Edmund Venables, 1876

"The Lane"

image for the essay "A Bit of Sunshine"

To Mrs. Barnard's, South Eaton Place. Madame Sainton-Dolby, Miss Ingelow. Little Miss Parr, who writes novels as ' Holme Lee,' looked nice in a high dress of lavender silk, like a quiet little old-maidish governess. Miss Thackeray accosted her, and so did I; we spoke of the Isle of Wight, New Forest, etc. 'London fatigues me,' she said: 'going to Dulwich to-morrow.' As we drove home Miss Thackeray exclaimed of one of the guests; 'Horrid woman!' she said to me, "I have been much pleased with some of your efforts," and, "You must have felt leaving that  nice house in Palace Gardens!" but little Holme Lee's a duck.'
- p179, William Allingham, a diary (1907, Internet Archive williamallingham00alli)

Hurrying home, I rushed out into the garden to tell my mother of my discovery, and found her sitting with Harriet Parr, a well-known novelist, who had come to stay at Whippingham. My mother's excitement exceeded my own. The volume might be Reynolds's own copy and contain manuscript notes! As soon as her horse could be brought round, she explained to her guest the urgency of the occasion, and, committing Miss Parr to my care as host, rode off to Newport. Within the hour she was back, waving the book in triumph. Meanwhile, as soon as I had recovered from my awe of a live authoress, Miss Parr and I had become friends. She had made her pen-name of Holme Lee famous, and was a "best-seller" both in England and America. She was, as I remember her, a frail-looking little woman, with crinkly grey hair, delicate features, and mittened blue-veined hands. Her domestic novels, written in a style as simple and unaffected as herself, were of the sentimental type. The whole incident is dated for me by her gift of her novel, Sylvan Holt's Daughter, with the inscription, “To my kind host of July 1864”.
- Whippingham to Westminster: The Reminiscences of Lord Ernle (Rowland Prothero), John Murray, 1938

Miss Harriet Parr, formerly very well known as a writer of the old-fashioned three-volumed novel type, lived for years at Whitwell Mead, a house on the bridle road from Shanklin to Godshill
-  page 145, Wanderings in the Isle of Wight, Ethel C Hargrove, 1913

SHANKLIN - FOOTWAY STOPPED
At the last meeting of the Isle of Wight County Commissioners the Clark read some communications with respect to the locking the gate of a private road by the lord of the manor, Mr. F. White-Popham.This road he declared a private  road, and that he should defend it against any who might think proper to dispute it.
...
The Clark also read a letter from a Miss Parr, lessee of a house in the manor of Shanklin, who likewise complained of the road being closed, mention of the road as a short cut to the church having induced her to take the lease of her house.
- County Petty Sessions, Isle of Wight Observer (Ryde, England), Saturday, June 19, 1875; pg. 6; Issue 1179. 19th Century British Library Newspapers: Part II.

"The lady doth protest too much" must, I should imagine, have been the comment of
many of your readers after perusing the letter of Miss Harriet Parr, in your last week's issue, on the Shanklin footpath question. Zeal in behalf of a supposed public right cannot be accepted as an excuse for misrepresentation. I believe I am correct in stating that the question which this lady has re-opened was fully discussed and settled locally many
years ago, and if Miss Parr is not satisfied with that settlement, the Courts are open to her.
- Occasional Jottings, Isle of Wight County Press, Saturday, November 19, 1887, page 5 (reproduced as fair usage, Isle of Wight County Press Archive archive.iwcp.co.uk).

MISS PARR AND THE BOARD
The clerk said he had received some communications from Miss Parr respecting an alleged right of way near the Manor House, Shanklin.---Mr G. Way: Is it the same question that has arisen before?---The Clerk said he believed that it was, but as far as he could understand, the lady said she had got some fresh evidence.---Mr J.O. Brook suggested that the surveyor should report---The Chairman said he did not know what there was to report upon.
...
The Clerk said he could not understand Miss Parr's letter without going on the spot.---Mr G. Way: Are there any complaints from the public generally?---The Clerk: No.---Mr G. Way thought they were not called upon as a Board to enter into the grievance of one individual.---The Clerk was instructed to reply to Miss Parr that no sufficient reason had been shown for reopening the question.
- Isle of Wight Highway Commissioners, Isle of Wight County Press, Saturday, March 23, 1889, page 3 (reproduced as fair usage, Isle of Wight County Press Archive archive.iwcp.co.uk).