A visit to Brading Church, Isle of Wight in 1892

In 1892, my great great grandfather, George Millman, visited the Isle of Wight with his family. Here’s an interesting extract from his diary, describing a visit to St Mary’s Church, Brading:

However, on we walked until we reached Brading & immediately made for the place where we had tea last year & also arranged for the supply of hot water & cups & saucers & a nice room where we could all enjoy our Tea.

& whilst the good lady was boiling the kettle we went into the church cemetry & recited “Little Jane’s Grace” of whom we read so much about in “Annals of the Poor” by Leigh Richmond & while thus engaged the woman who cleans out the church intimated to us that if we desired it (& of course tickled the palm of her hand) she would show us over the church.

Now this church is 1300 years old and of course many relics to see. We saw Lady Oglander’s Chapel (inside the church), the family of Oglanders came over to this country with William the Conqueror & at present there is only 2 of the family left 1 a very old lady (Lady Oglander) the other her sister who is old & a complete idiot so that when these 2 die the name will have entirely died out & the estates will go to another branch of the family of a different name. We also saw little carved images of the Oglander family and they were carved 800 years ago & were quite crumbling away, also we saw a list of the names of the vicars from 684 AD. Fancy that! Over 1200 years ago.

The church is lighted with oil lamps. We also saw carved in the stone floor a representation of one of the Oglanders, and originally the hands were silver & also was the top part of the head but during the civil wars with Cromwell the church was ransacked & every thing of any value stolen, among other things the soldiers stole the silver hands & top part of the head & you can now see where the marker or hole is & many other interesting things could be related.