Kitty Millman’s Victorian book: Island Scenery (Isle of Wight History)
From Island Scenery: The Isle of Man, Isle of Wight, and the British Islands, given to Kitty Millman as a school prize.
The Isle of Wight has been possessed and inhabited successively by the British, Romans, Jutes, Normans, and English. The shape of the island is rhomboidal, and may be compared to a huge pear. The greatest length is twenty-two miles, and the breadth, from north to south, is thirteen miles. The surface is beautifully diversified. A range of high hills runs right through the centre, intersected by rich vales, bold headlands, and flower-decked glens. On the southern side, or, as it is termed, the back of the island, the cliffs attain an altitude of eight hundred feet, and are greatly frequented by large numbers of marine birds, amongst which may be specified gulls, puffins, razor-bills, cormorants, shags, Cornish choughs, daws, and wild pigeons. At the western point are the majestic chalk cliffs of the High Down, flanked with the detached masses of perpendicular chalk rock, styled The Needles. In the year 1764 one of the most imposing of these pinnacles – one hundred and twenty feet high – fell into the sea.
At Fresh-water Gate is a fine natural archway, formed by the restless action of the waters, and close by it is Scratchell’s Cave, only accessible by boat. Across one of the chasms the voice of tradition says that a stag once leapt. If that be true, the walls of the gulf must have been much nearer each other in bygone times than they are at present. The bays and coasts of the western extremity may be regarded as a veritable mineralogists and geologists’ paradise. The strata lie in a vertical position, and contain thick masses of intermediate clays and various tinted sands – grey, buff, and red, which from a distance give a picturesque effect. In the clays are to be found many interesting and well-preserved fossils, an evidence that in distant ages it was the estuary of some expansive river, which here emptied itself into the sea.
Alum Bay derives its name from the large quantities of alum found there. In the bays of Alum and Fresh-water are beds of micaceous sand, or, as it is popularly termed, ‘silver sand,’ used in the construction of pictures of Isle of Wight objects and scenery. It is also shipped in large quantities for the china and glass manufactories of Worcester and Bristol. Some thin seams of coal have been found in the locality. Throughout the island are dug red and yellow ochres, native sulpher, copperas stones, and pipe clay. The climate, scenery, geological formations, and historical associations have popularised the Isle of Wight, and made it one of the health resorts, flower-gardens, and playgrounds of the English holiday-seeker.
