Isle of Wight (7): Shells at St Helens and Various Odds and Ends

Sophie Dawes - her story

Our destination on the Thursday morning was St Helens in the east of the island, with its spacious village greens. It was pouring with rain on our arrival, so we spent a happy hour in the excellent secondhand bookshop, Mother Goose Books, where I selected a couple of volumes on the island's literary links.

We drove towards the Duver at the mouth of Bembridge Harbour. The word 'Duver' is an interesting one as you will see if you click the link. The more usual word is 'dune', as in sand dune. Cornwall has 'towans' and the Welsh word is not dissimilar to this.

The Duver is a small spit of land running across the mouth of the River Yar. It is made up of sand dunes and shingle beaches, and is bordered by saltmarsh. A golf course was built here in the 1890s, but that has now gone. It is a wildlife-rich area, part of it being a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). Autumn Squill is one of the rareties that grows in this special habitat. You can read about the insects here.

We had our picnic lunch on the foreshore in the rain and set off towards Nodes Point. I was amazed at the number of shells.

The scallop below was my favourite.

This is its underside (below)...

I wonder how many varieties there are in this photo. Are many of these Slipper Limpets, do you think?

There were a number of oyster shells like the one below. I expect the Romans enjoyed finding these in days gone by. 

The photo below shows a Common Otter Shell. 

And here in the photo below, with a cockle on the right, is what I think is the egg case of the Common Whelk.

 

Shells were not the only thing of interest. There was a notice about Priory Point, named after a former Cluniac house. We took a walk around the remains of the ruined 13th century tower of St Helen's church.

You may be able to tell from the photo below that the outer wall of the ruined tower has been painted white. This is because it is used as a sea mark. I love the formation of the rocks in the foreground.

There seems to be a lot of history...

... and hearsay associated with this corner of the island.

We could see the Bembridge lifeboat in the distance from St Helens.

We went on to Bembridge for a pot of tea and large slices of chocolate cake. 

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I mentioned in a previous post that the church with Pre-Raphaelite windows at St Lawrence near Ventnor was locked on our first visit. The rain continued so we thought we would try again, and this time the door opened. The stained glass was well worth seeing as you can tell from this small piece below. I wonder what the white birds are meant to be. I think the scene is from verse 4 of the parable of The Sower.

I haven't been able to work out how to add my next three photos on the same line. They comprise a 19th century stained glass triptych in the south wall of the church, showing Peter (carrying the keys of the Kingdom), Luke (the doctor with a medicinal plant), and finally John the Evangelist.

 Peter, from a cartoon by Burne-Jones

 Luke, from a cartoon by Ford Madox Brown

Close-up of Luke's medicinal plant

John, from a cartoon by Burne-Jones

You can read more about the windows here.

We left the church and went down to the beach at Ventnor to watch the waves.

 We noticed a rainbow and hoped the rain was on its way out.

I am almost at the end of these Isle of Wight posts, but before I reach that point I want to add in a few corners that have been missed out up until now.

David was interested in the forts around the coast, so you will not be surprised to learn that we visited Fort Victoria one afternoon in glorious sunshine. I can't say it was a favourite spot on the island for me, but the views along the Solent were well worth seeing.

We even saw a dolphin ... of sorts ...

I have hardly touched upon our excursions along and above the Military Road on the south of the island. We reached St Catherine's Oratory, aka the Pepperpot, late one afternoon. It was time to buy supper in Ventnor, so we only stopped for a moment and I took this record shot from the car park below, which is why the other half of the tower appears to be missing.

On this occasion we had come from the Compton Down area, where we spent a little time watching the surfers at Hanover Point.

I saw my only Stonechat of the holiday in this area.

This part of the island is in the care of the National Trust. Iguanodon are said to have inhabited these parts in former times. Dinosaur bones and footprints have been identified.

This white 'ammonite'  below was the only 'fossil' we found during our holiday!

Sadly these wonderful cliffs are eroding at a rapid rate. The fossils that they yield may help our knowledge of science, but there is something very tragic about erosion. The scene below reminded us just how fragile our environment can be. 

When we turned our backs to the sea we had this wonderful view of the down.

 The photo below shows the Five Barrows in the evening light.

Our visit was too early in the season, but these downs are good butterfly habitats. The National Trust have produced a Butterfly Walk. The organisation has recently acquired land in the Dunsbury area: you can read about the trail here. You can read about one of the rare butterfly species, the Glanville Fritillary, here - and also here on the National Trust website.

The light was fading fast. We ate our picnic overlooking the beach as the sun set on the far side of Tennyson Down. Edward Thomas, one of my favourite poets, wrote that...

'nothing impedes the eye in its travelling far westward over a long procession of downs ... and the long sheer white walls of the Freshwater and Highdown Cliffs, under the windy grey and white of the huge sky.'  

 The Isle of Wight by Edward Thomas

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Sadly Yarmouth Castle did not open until the day we were due to catch the ferry back to the mainland. We reached Yarmouth in good time despite having to follow a traction engine, and David whizzed in to the castle for a quick look. There is so much we still have to see, and I hope we return sometime during the butterfly season.  

We boarded the 'Wight Sky' and set off for Lymington. We were the only passengers on deck. It was bracing and bitterly cold. I was glad of all the clothes I had worn in Philadelphia in January seven years ago! 

 As we set sail, I did get to see just a little of Yarmouth castle after all ...

It was not long before our 'berth' in Lymington came into view. 

Our 2018 Isle of Wight Posts

1. Caroline's post on Osborne House and Carisbrooke Castle
2. Caroline's post on Brading Roman Villa
3. Caroline's post on Newport Roman Villa
4. Caroline's post on Tennyson's Home at Farringford
5. Caroline's post on the rainbow sands at Alum Bay
6. Caroline's post on Mottistone, Newtown and Wildlife
7. This post on St Helens, St Lawrence and other destinations
8. David Gill's posts on the Heritage Futures blog

I have been blogging for quite a number of years now, and owe so much to the blogging community. I am very indebted to fellow blogger, Ragged Robin, whose wonderful posts inspired many of our Isle of Wight expeditions. Thank you, RR, so much for all the tips, the photographs, the wildlife information and so much more. May the web continue to be a source for the sharing of good things.

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During my Cornish childhood holidays, we often used to chant the Benedicite, a canticle in praise of creation, in church on Sunday mornings. I referred to the fact in a previous post that Tennyson loved the stars which shine brightly on the island due to the lack of pollution. I thought I would end my Isle of Wight posts with this photo of a phrase from the canticle on part of the roof of the chapel of St Nicholas in Castro which lies within the walls of Carisbrooke Castle ...

Isle of Wight (6): Mottistone, Newtown NNR and Wildlife Areas

Those of you who have followed the winding path of this blog will know that I find an unusual sign hard to resist. Sadly, as I have mentioned in a previous post, we failed to catch a glimpse of one of these beautiful Red Squirrels. We came across the sign near the Botanic Garden in Ventnor en route to St Lawrence, where one of the churches has Pre-Raphaelite stained glass. I had hoped to visit the gardens, but by this stage in the week the weather had turned against us. I would love to return in summer to watch the native or naturalised Wall Lizards.

Earlier in the week we had spent a glorious afternoon exploring the gardens at NT Mottistone. The manor here was first mentioned in the Domesday Book. The gardens, by contrast, were planted and restored by Lady Nicholson in the 1960s.

The manor provides a wonderful backdrop to the gardens, but is not open to the public. John Seely, 2nd Lord Mottistone, restored the manor house in 1926.

What a joy to see a bank of primroses as we approached the garden. 

There were more signs of spring in the grounds, even if these were of a more cultivated kind. 

The photo above shows the Manor as you see it on arrival. 

This is the view from further round.

Some of you may remember that I like to post photos of the shepherds' huts I encounter. The Shack above is not one of those, but it reminded me of them in a way. Architect John Seely, 2nd Lord Mottistone, designed it with Paul Paget in the 1930s and, according to the National Trust, it was used as a country office and rural retreat. It began life at Freshwater and was built along the lines of a two-berth cabin on a boat.

We were surprised not only by the number of corvids on the island but also by the number of raptors. I was rewarded with this sighting of a Buzzard while David climbed to the heights in search of the Long Stone.

It was cloudy, but apparently the views from the top of the down were wonderful. You can see the Long Stone standing proud in the photo below. 

The name, Mottistone probably, probably derives from 'moot stone', a stone to mark the meeting place, or moot, in Anglo-Saxon times. The stone itself predates these days and is thought to be the entrance to a neolithic Long Barrow, or burial chamber. It was excavated in 1956. 

We had an exceptionally good National Trust tea in the garden and made our way across the road to the parish church of St Peter and St Paul. 

The churchyard was a wonderful wildlife habitat, apparently attracting butterflies and bats, though we were too early in the year to see these creatures for ourselves.

 Sadly we also missed the chirruping, chirring grasshoppers and crickets!

We went inside to have a look around. Some of the roof timbers in the chancel had once been part of the 'Cedrene', a Bermudan barque that had been wrecked off the coast. 

The seahorse banners were beautiful. I suspect they are linked to the Seely family as, according to The Oldest House in London by Fiona Rule, Paget included two seahorses as a memorial to 'John Mottistone' (John Seely of Mottistone) in a niche in a clergy house they had renovated together in Westminster Abbey's Little Cloister.  

There was a little sunlight shining through the stained glass below as we left the church. 

We headed off to East Cowes for a sunset picnic, watching the hovercraft, cruise ships and ferries on the Solent. 

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It was lovely to see corners of the Isle of Wight given over to wildlife. In addition to the nature reserves and the wildlife churchyard at Mottistone, we discovered a wildlife garden in the NT grounds of Bembridge Windmill. 

We visited the mill on a particularly chilly morning, and were lured inside by the enticing aroma of hot coffee. 

I had a quick look around the ground floor of the mill, and was particularly taken with the only owl I saw on the island...

I left David to climb the mill and ventured outside to see the sheep. 

What a magnificent face.

The photo above shows the sheep high above the flat lands that are such a feature of this corner of the island.

I mentioned wildlife gardens, and while this was not a garden, it was good to see that land around the mill had been kept aside and given over to wildlife. The first nettles of the season were beginning to spring up.

I imagine this fungus will feed and play host to a huge variety of species. A previous post featured the Roman villa at Brading, and up above on Brading Down we had noticed more wildlife provision, as the board explained ...

Having looked, all too briefly, at gardens and wildlife provision on the island, I must move on to the nature reserve at Newtown. But before I do, I can't leave the Bembridge area without posting this photo below of Holy Trinity church: the palms that had been used on Palm Sunday a few days before had been laid out on the path, a practice we had not seen before.

And finally (in this post) to Newtown Nature Reserve! 

We went via Yarmouth where we stopped for a quick look around and, having seen the horsetails on our way, noticed the board below advertising not only charabanc rides but also coal from the north east. We don't often see horsetails in our part of sandy Suffolk; but when I see them, they take me back to junior school and the work we did on early times such as the Carboniferous Era when these vascular plants were prolific. We know this because they have shown up in coal measures.

We moved on to the nature reserve at Newchurch, run by the National Trust. 

As you can see, we came across two boards listing recent sightings. Our own list was far less impressive, but we thoroughly enjoyed watching the birds we managed to see. 

The Mute Swans below greeted us on arrival. It was early evening by this time, and a rather murky evening at that.

We spent some time in the hide, looking over Clamerkin Lake. We noticed some geese in the distance and large flocks of Black-headed gulls.

There was some useful information in the hide, like the map-diagram below. We learned that the lake was situated on the East Atlantic Flyway, and was therefore a key spot for migrating birds.

You can see the gulls in the distance in the photo below.

The Solent area is renowned as a good place for sailing.

Once again it was the corvids who tried to steal the show: what a fine Jackdaw!

We always love to see Little Egrets so were very pleased when this one came into view. I recall the first one we ever saw, soon after our arrival (and, I believe, their arrival, too) in the Swansea area. That first one we spotted was on the Gower peninsula at the edge of the Loughor estuary back in the early 1990s.

My last photo in this post shows one of the Redshanks we watched. These birds probe in the shallows for their food.

Thank you for reading this far! My final post in this Isle of Wight series will include some of the sites we saw in and around St Helens (no apostrophe as I understand, like the city of St Davids in Wales; but please correct me if this is not the case). I will complete my tour with a few miscellaneous items that took my fancy along the way.