Kitty Millman’s Victorian book: Island Scenery (Ryde, Isle of Wight)

My great-great-grandparents, George and Mary Millman, visited the Isle of Wight in August 1892 with their daughters Hepsie and Kitty. That Christmas, Kitty received a beautiful new book as a school prize for Music and Drawing: Island Scenery: The Isle of Man, Isle of Wight and the British Islands, published that year by James B Knapp of London.

Here is an extract about the town of Ryde:

Fashionable Ryde is charmingly situated on the north-eastern coast, and overlooks the waters of the English Channel. It is the largest and most important town in the island, and was incorporated as recently as 1868. Until the beginning of the present century it was but an uneventful village, with few inhabitants. As far back as the reign of Richard II, it was burnt by the French during one of their marauding excursions. It first received public attention about the year 1753, by the graphic and favourable description given of it by Henry Fielding, one of the celebrated writers of that century, who visited what he terms ‘the pleasant village’ of Ryde while on his way to Lisbon. The streets and principal thoroughfares are well laid out; at a gentle gradient they rise from the shore, and are studded with numerous substantial mansions and pretty villas, embowered in trees and masses of greenery.

The town is well supplied with public buildings, one of the most prominent being the Royal Victoria Yacht Club, in the Italian style of architecture., the foundation stone having been laid by the late Prince Consort. The other places of general interest include a Town Hall, Market House, School of Art, Museum, and Royal Isle of Wight Infirmary. The suite of rooms belonging to the Young Men’s Christian Association and Literary Institute comprises a library, with well-stocked shelves. The church of All Saints contains three handsome stained-glass windows in memory of the late Prince Consort. The town has numerous chapels for Roman Catholics, Congregationalists, Baptists, Wesleyans, Primitive Methodists, Bible Christians, and others.

One of the chief attractions of Ryde is the spacious esplanade, skirting the sea and abutting at the water’s edge in a stone wall, extending for about a mile in length, and terminating in a narrow footway at Sea View on a little headland. The promenade is laid out on the Continental or boulevard plan. At intervals, skirting the carriage drive, are ornamental gardens and shrubberies, fitted with seats, where the visitor can listen to ‘the music of the wild waves.’ In the gardens is a miniature lake, comprising three acres of water, that is used in summer for boating purposes and during the months of winter as a skating rink. At the western extremity of the esplanade is the entrance to the spacious landing pier, first opened for the benefit of residents and visitors in 1814; by various additions and extensions it now stretches seaward for two thousand two hundred and fifty feet. Running parallel therewith is the railway pier, opened in July, 1880, and terminating at the Pier Head railway station. By tunnel the railway is carried underneath the town; at St John’s-road it unites with the Isle of Wight railway. The necessity of the line was shown by the first quarterly return, for during the first three months after opening it had carried over seventy thousand passengers, and the number since then has steadily increased.