 |
NEWTOWNISLE OF WIGHT |
The following article, taken from a local newspaper (probably the Evening News, Portsmouth) in 1937, and written very much in the style of the time gives a brief history of the town. The pictures were not part of the original article.
Island's One-Time Capital
The Story of Newtown and Its Ups and Downs
HALF-A-DOZEN cottages and not even a pub!
That is Newtown, one-time capital of the Isle of Wight, scene of the rapine and murder in raids by the Norsemen and the French; twice burned, twice built up; and now suffering from the decay that was it's latest and maybe it's final malady.
Now Newtown is just one of the hamlets on the so-called river it names. This river is a series of five creeks running into the Island from the Solent like the imprint of a watery hand. It is known by yachtsmen the world over; true yachtsmen, who glory in secluded anchorages and avoid the more fashionable parts where one cannot sail because of the congestion, or use the motor because of the underwater forests of mooring cables.
But Newtown has a maritime part. One every finger of the hand one finds sudden pieces of old mouldering quay, quite unconnected with anything, and with treacherous slim-covered steps leading from nowhere down into the thick mud of the silted creek.
EVIDENCE OF THRIVING DAYS
These relics are evidence of its thriving days, when coastal trade was carried on in long rowing galleys or in sailing boats of the very lightest draught. As a haven, it is protected from all winds, with a bar and twisting estuary to keep out the Solent seas. The tide is not so fast as in most Island inlets, and when the river was more carefully tended and the silt controlled must have been even slower.
The town was at its maximum commercial importance in late Saxon and early Norman times. With the Tudors, it was already old-fashioned, but still valued.
In pre-Conquest years, it was one of the five important towns of the Island: Eremouth (Yarmouth), Francheville (Newtown), Carisbrooke, Brading, and Sandham (Sandown). Francheville, or free-town, was probably so called because of some taxation privileges it enjoyed.
As a flourishing port, it received, it received the attentions of the Danes during their invasion in 1001, and was completely destroyed. A New Town was built on the site but it had no better fate. The Normans inherited from their Viking ancestors the art of coast raiding. They were among the first peoples to indulge in indignant diplomacy whilst allowing unmarked warships to sail the seas plundering non-combatants. They reached Newtown several times, and when they could no longer reasonably destroy what had become their own possession, their French neighbours caught the habit.
GUTTED BY THE FRENCH
It was in 1377, after three hundred years of misery, that the French completely gutted the New Town, and a New Port was built by the terrified Islanders in a less venerable position. Newtown has been declining ever since that date. Apart from the military reasons, ships were increasing in size and the Newtown river was becoming inadequate.
In those days, however, such details as population or importance had no influence on a community's political life. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the town began to send two Members to Parliament. (The whole Island now sends but one.) There was a mayor and corporation, who are said to have maintained a fine standard of municipal dignity, particularly as applied to feasting and banquets.
The municipal system was an example of the comparatively rare 'burgage tenure'. A burgess held a piece of the borough land, the rent for which was paid to the Mayor and Chief Burgess. This system probably arose out of the fact that the New Town was built by a sort of communistic effort of all the inhabitants, and this feudal result may serve as an excellent example of how a social regime starting at the extreme Left may soon gravitate to the Right.
Every Burgess had a Parliamentary vote, and returning its two members, Newtown must have been one of the rottenest of Duke of Marlborough, and George Canning, the orator and great supported of William Pitt. The Reform Act of 1832 not only removed the two M.P.'s but sacked the Mayor and corporation, but not before the latter had re-built the Town Hall.
|
|
|
| The Town Hall before restoration. | The Town Hall as it is today. |
SALT MAKING AND OYSTER CULTIVATION
Newtown, apart from its business as a port, has had two industries. One was the making of salt by evaporating sea water, which process was carried on until the latter part of the nineteenth century. The other business is that of cultivating oysters. Newtown claims to have the finest oysters known. Their beds are in Clamerkin Lake, as the most easterly finger of the river is called. The oysters are held to be particularly fine, because no sewage goes into the Newtown river. Yachts are so small and so few that they cause no pollution. The oyster fisheries make yachts unpopular with some of the few residents, as being a threat to the proud purity of the natives. So much so when the Newtown buoy broke away from its moorings off the river no-one troubled to replace it. People are not likely to re-visit a place where they spent half-a-day ignobly stuck in most adhesive mud.
These fisheries are Newtown. There are no ruins. The old streets are long avenues, like rides in an old forest. On either side the land is divided into squares, with the remains of old fruit trees, still bearing small crops long after they should have ceased to be fruitful. There are no signs of houses where their one-time owners lived. The whole is the plant of a town rather than the town itself.
TOWN'S FIRST WATER SUPPLY
On the road to Shalfleet and Newport, the old town hall stands, where the old corporation dined and supped and acknowledged its two Members of Parliament. The burgess's houses are all gone. One looks at the fine stone-faced leeves which keep the sea out of the grazing land called Newtown March, and ceases to wonder why there are no ruins.
|
|
On the left of the road down to the quay is the old town pump, with
its huge wheel and now air-sucking piston. Almost
opposite, in the garden of Old Nobby's Cottage, is the well which was the first water supply of the community, and the place most desperately defended in the past, as the only source of drinking water for miles. |
|
The cottages which used to be the village inn have a strange sign over the door, which is said to be a reproduction of the old seal of the town, granted by Bishop Aymer, of Winchester, in Norman times. Its lettering defies translation, though the pictorial part is very like that of Portsmouth. There is a ship - though in Newtown's case it is an old Norman type single-masted craft with a high fighting tower at the each end, surmounted by a sickle moon and a star.
|
|
|
|
The current church is comparatively modern, with a pleasantly curved roof and a rich smell of apples hanging over from the last harvest festival. There is a list of the Rectors of Calbourne who, from 1306, were in charge of the chapelry of Newtown, and of the two Vicars of Newtown from the year 1871. There is now no vicar of Newtown and the site of the vicarage is just an overgrown garden. |
It is difficult to imagine this sanctuary for sea-birds and rabbits as the thriving capital of Wight, the very thought of which made foreign raiders lick their lips and sharpen their swords.
The article was credited to D.MacR
(pictures are mine)
Freshwater | Totland | Alum Bay and the Needles | Yarmouth | Shalfleet | Newtown | Calbourne | Carisbrooke Castle | Newport and Carisbrooke | Cowes and Gurnard | Osborne House | Wootton, Fishbourne and Quarr | Ryde | Seaview | Bembridge | Brading | Sandown | Shanklin | Godshill | Ventnor | St Lawrence and the Undercliff | St Catherine's Lighthouse's | Niton | Blackgang Chine | Blackgang and Chale | Brighstone and Shorwell | Mottistone to Compton