Newport - the Capital!

Chapter 17: Newport - the Capital

Newport reminds me of the northern Italian city, Genoa - or Genova, to give it its proper name. Not because there’s the remotest resemblance, but because of the way both tend to be pooh-poohed by locals.

Sometime in the 1990s when I was unencumbered by a wife, two children and a cat, my brother Dominic and I decided to take a weekend trip to Genoa to have a look around and take in a Sampdoria football game. The Italian barmaid in Dom’s local pub, The Lemon Tree, next to English National Opera’s home in London, was astonished that we'd chosen that particular city.

“It’s horrible,“ she insisted. “Ugly.” She drew her hands to her stomach, grimaced, and made a shivering sound to reinforce the point.

“There are so many nicer Italian cities you could go to. Why Genova?”

Now Dom was quite keen on this particular girl, and was a little put out by her disdain.

“Well obviously we know that,” he lied, “but there was a cheap Ryanair flight. Twenty pounds return.”

“And only £75 per piece of hand luggage,” I added.

When EasyJet and Ryanair first came on the market you did this kind of thing quite often, and we used to enjoy jetting off to different European destinations on a whim. Normally, the designated Ryanair airport was 100 miles from the city you were visiting, but you didn’t mind - it was all good fun for the young bachelor with few responsibilities.

Genoa turned out to be gorgeous, of course, and we couldn’t believe that Giulia had turned her nose up at it. The Italians are lucky: they can afford to pooh-pooh lots of their towns and cities because their bar is somewhat higher than ours. If Stratford-on-Avon was in Italy, they’d probably pooh-pooh it; goodness knows what they’d make of Stoke-on-Trent.

On the back of this experience we coined a phrase which we’d employ whenever we were on our travels: ‘Never take the locals’ advice.’ It’s a slightly arrogant viewpoint, but it’s applicable  more often than not.

This is where Newport comes in. When you’re on holiday, you pooh-pooh Newport. It’s not by the coast, it has few attractions, and really the tourist would have no reason to go there except for a mooch round the shops on a rainy day. Now that we've moved here, we’ve found that locals also pooh pooh it. Whether you’re an Overner, a Caulkhead or a tourist, poor old Newport is pooh-poohed.

But we quite like it.

The world is full of Newports, including two in the UK -  the county town of the Isle of Wight, and the one in south Wales -  which has caused plenty of confusion over the years. On our first holiday here, Eve needed a prescription to be sent from her doctor’s in Kent. Sure enough, it went to the Newport in Wales. And whenever you ask Google Maps for directions involving Newport,  it presumes you’re referring to the Wales Newport, which is pretty asinine, given that normally you’re asking for directions from somewhere on the Island.

Our Newport, as I say, we quite like. It’s compact, walkable, easily navigable and in my opinion quite pretty. There’s nothing here that would make you jump out of your seat and exclaim ‘Gosh!’, or whatever your exclamation of choice is (it may be less middle class than that). There’s a Roman Villa to go with the one at Brading up the road, but the Romans were everywhere, so that’s about as exciting as discovering you’ve put the right colour recycling bin out on bin collection day. Actually, although they were present on the Island, the Romans didn’t build any towns, preferring to develop the Island agriculturally and build a few villas, many of which are in the Newport area

In writing this book, I keep unearthing things I’ve never heard of, like the UNESCO Biosphere Reserves. It’s made me something of a pub bore; if you see me out and about talking to someone - or rather at someone - about the railways, geology, red squirrels or anything else Island related, please take off your shoe and throw it at me, making sure your aim is good. On our Easter visit to the Mainland, catch ups were punctuated with my lectures on these subjects. Holding forth to a retired vicar in a pub in Hadlow about St. Catherine was the apex of this, and even I had a moment when I realised I was being tedious.

So following hot on the heels of the Biosphere Reserves, I’ve learnt something else to bore people with: High Street Heritage Action Zones. This is a concept dreamt up by  an organisation called Historic England, an arm of English Heritage. There are 67 High Street Action Zones, with two on the Isle of Wight: Ryde and Newport. I’m not sure I recognise the description of Newport on the Action Zone webpage. “Sadly it is suffering from retail decline, empty shops and some buildings are rundown and showing serious signs of decay.” Eve agrees that this is a little on the harsh side. 

Be that as it may, the ‘priority building’ in this High Street scheme is the Guildhall, a really stunning neoclassical building constructed at the start of the 1800s. It’s very grand looking, with open colonnades and porticos, and adjoining it a tower with a clock. Incongruously, some of the ground floor was converted into public toilets in 1909. The toilet building thing started with the late Victorians; they started popping up everywhere. That was great, of course, except for the fact that they were all Gents. It never seems to have occurred to men that women also needed the loo. Astonishing! I told Freya this over dinner and she nearly fainted with indignation

There’s some kind of point to all this: inside this Guildhall building lies the Museum of Island History. Would it surprise you to know that on the day I visited, I was the only customer? No, me neither. 

John and Maria were sitting in the reception area eagerly awaiting their first visitor. Anyone. Even a drunk bagpipe player. They just wanted a customer. When I arrived, John apologised and said he’d have to ‘use the computer’ to take the one pound entry fee, as there was no card machine.

This meant me standing around for ten minutes while he typed and clicked away on the museum’s computer, commentating out loud as he progressed. It all seemed very complicated for one pound. I caught Maria’s eye a few times and we tried not to giggle as the interminable process went on. Goodness knows how they’d have coped in the unlikely event of a long queue snaking out of the door.

After this lengthy process was complete, I wandered about the two rooms for a few minutes, killing time before I had to pick up Freya from Platform One. The museum staff to visitor ratio was 3 to 1, so I thought I’d use the opportunity to ask some questions. Stella was the Education Officer for the museum, liaising with schools to bring the history of the Island alive for pupils. The first question I asked her was about the Mountbatten connection with the Island. 

“Louis Mountbatten was a Governor of the Isle of Wight until he was assassinated by the IRA in 1979. He was the last Governor actually. The tradition died when he died.”

“So what did a Governor do? It sounds very colonial but presumably it was ceremonial.”

“He was a champion for the Isle of Wight and continued the Royal Family’s association with it, which I think started with Queen Victoria. He was also the first Lord Lieutenant, which basically means he was the Queen’s personal representative.”

None of the three seemed quite sure how exactly his Governorship led to the enduring relationship between the Isle of Wight and the Mountbatten family name, but he obviously had a strong bond with the Island, and who can blame him. Nowadays the Mountbatten name here is synonymous with the Hospice which I frequent every Wednesday evening. 

One of the museum’s more striking displays featured the alliterative Giuseppe Garibaldi, he of Italian unification and biscuits with raisins fame - two rather dissimilar things to be remembered for. (A bit like Che Guevara being remembered for the Cuban revolution and jammy dodgers.) The display informed me that a Victorian industrialist and politician called Charles Seely, a great supporter of Italian Unification, had invited old GG to his house in London and then to the Isle of Wight. Seeley and the biscuit dude duly arrived in Cowes in 1864 to an excited  crowd of around 2000. It must have been a slow news day, though his revolutionary behaviour ensured he was something of a champion for the workers and trade unions. 

What I wondered was if the aforementioned Charles Seely came from the same Seely family as our current Island MP, Bob Seeley.

“Absolutely,” Stella informed me. They’re an old family on the Island. Charles was a coal miner from Nottinghamshire who came to the Island in the 1850s. They lived in Brook in the West.”

Apparently, Queen Victoria refused to talk to Charles for a quarter of a century after he’d invited the Italian revolutionary to the Island, which seems a long time to hold a grudge. Victoria gave her tacit support to Italian unification, and in fact Britain was just about the first country to formally recognise the new Italy. (It’s not hard to recognise - it’s the one with the boot at the end!) However she was worried about the effect the revolutionary GG was having on workers and was therefore anxious to get rid of him. Before he departed the Island he met Tennyson, who resided in these parts, and they apparently read poetry to each other. Maybe Lord Alfred recited Charge of the Light Brigade to his new friend, which wouldn’t have been inappropriate. Lady Tennyson, who was eavesdropping, told friends that neither party understood the other during all this!

Stella and I went on to talk about education on the Island. When I asked her whether she thought there was a lack of aspiration amongst pupils here she wasn’t sure, tending to think that issues here were generic to the whole country. She suggested things may have deteriorated following the pandemic.

“But I think some people here do feel trapped,” she told me. “You can’t really go anywhere when you’re on the Island unless you pay to leave - and some people can’t afford it.” 

We’ve come across that before in these pages, of course; it’s a common theme. The other day, my attention was drawn to a twenty year old student’s post on TikTok in which she outlined her frustrations living here. Top of the list was the cost of the ferries, and second was ‘no shops’; she cited the lack of Greggs as an example, regarding this omission as ‘horrifying’. Amusingly, the responses from her followers focused more on the Greggs thing than any of her other gripes, with another Islander remarking that it ‘broke her heart’ not to be able to munch on a Greggs sausage roll. I think that the ferry and shop issues are connected; the seemingly superficial point about not having a Greggs is key to why young people here feel disconnected living here. Knowing their Mainland counterparts can swan off to Greggs or Nandos or Primark at will must be galling and exacerbate the feeling of isolation - alienation, even. (I’ve mentioned Greggs five - now six - times; maybe a bit of product placement might do the trick!)

Another of the display boards in the museum states: ‘The earliest settlers may well have been trapped here by the rising sea.’ Maybe being trapped is at the root of the Island mentality more than I’ve realised.

I left John, Maria and Stella to twiddle their thumbs and hopefully await the next visitor. They were a lovely but slightly disparate trio, and I wasn’t sure what they’d talk about to pass the time.

Historic England describes Newport as a ‘Historic Market Town. Hmm! What does that mean? There’s the Guildhall, and a Queen Victoria Memorial on the corner of James Street and the High Street. St. James’s Square has some kind of history. The 12th Century Newport Minster will also be an interesting diversion after it opens following significant refurbishments but is the town really ‘historic’? It’s definitely got more history than Milton Keynes, and it has a past, but for me, primarily, it’s a pleasant, functional town that I always enjoy strolling around.

Up the road from Newport - almost adjoining it - is the village of Carisbrooke, home to the Island’s only castle (though someone is bound to write in, contradicting that).  We’ve visited it, as you do, and it was very nice in a castley sort of way. A greater memory was a game we used to play with visitors’ books at the time. This is going to make you realise quite how immature my family and I are, if that’s not already evident.

It’s a game I inherited from my silly parents played by myself and my silly siblings. Basically, you replicate every aspect of the handwriting and style of the person who has written above you in the book, and copy every word except for your name and where you’re from. So if the previous visitor has written ‘Really interesting castle; the kids loved it’, you write the same in the same handwriting.

As I retell this, I realise that it’s more of a visual gag. What’s that phrase? ‘You had to be there’! In any case I’d expect the editor to cut this bit, not least because he doesn’t want to be associated with such juvenile tomfoolery. 

Oh - and it’s a motte-and-bailey castle and Charles I was imprisoned there for a few months in 1649 before his head was chopped off. History doesn’t mention if he signed the visitor’s book. 

Back in Newport, I should mention that there is something in the county town that epitomises all that is glorious and wonderful about our sceptered isle: a one way system. The Newport one is actually pretty self-explanatory; you're guided through it kind of like a gentle roller coaster, and although the traffic lights are interminable, it’s almost relaxing. 

What isn’t relaxing is navigating the Coppins Bridge roundabout to get onto the one way system. This infamous roundabout is the Clapham Junction and/or Spaghetti Junction of the Island (other junctions are probably available), and even for an experienced Mainland driver, a daunting experience. Your heart sinks as you approach it - especially if your name is Mrs. Griffiths; you’re bound to get into the wrong lane (especially if your name is Mrs. Griffiths) and end up on the road to Ryde instead of Sandown. There’s a trick to it, but I haven’t learnt it yet, and given that as previously written, Islanders don’t understand roundabouts, how they work, what they are for, what on earth to do when you get to one (answer: nothing: just wait until there’s nothing coming from any direction for at least 200 yards), it can be safely assumed that Mr. Coppin was one of life’s optimists. Coppins Bridge roundabout was actually named after Mr. William ‘Idiot’ Coppin (I gave him the middle name, not his parents), who was the fellow who built it - so really it should have an apostrophe, but standards these days…... However during the construction, scatterbrained Bill kept forgetting his compass and had to make do with drawing round an weirdly shaped ornament he’d purloined from an elderly aunt for the purpose - because round, it definitely ain’t.

There’s a church on the roundabout, maybe built so that folk could stop off for a quick prayer before they became snarled up in WC’s creation. It’s called ‘The church on the roundabout’ and is an Elim Pentecostal Church. (No, I don’t know what that is either.)

One of the exits leads onto the Medina Way which goes north to Cowes. After you pass the Isle of Wight College on your right half a mile or so north of the roundabout, there are two rather important institutions on either side of the road: The Isle of WIght Prison and St. Mary’s Hospital. The Yorkshire Ripper was housed on the Island for a while (the ferry crossing must have been somewhat startling for fellow passengers as he queued up at the cafe buying a coffee and some Isle of Wight fudge and planning his visit to the Garlic Farm) and I suppose having a prison and a hospital opposite each other might be fun. 

I had reason to visit St. Mary’s Hospital in March following a very irritating bout of sciatica. A combination of age, the cold, a dodgy back and too much cycling had caused me to struggle to move without saying “Aaaaargh” in a loud voice.

This particular Tuesday I was struggling to get up and dressed. My commitment to work is unstinting - actually not so much to the kids as the staff and teachers who have been so supportive - and Lisa in particular. But Eve decided otherwise; this is the advantage of being in a relationship, I suppose there’s someone there at all times to tell you to stop being an idiot (Mrs. Coppin was appallingly negligent here).

“Right. That’s it,” she said firmly. “I’m taking you to A & E. Now. I’ll ring school and tell them.”

“But….”

“Freya”, Eve shouted upstairs, “I’m taking Dad to the hospital in Newport. See you later.”

“Hang on,” Freya yelled.”if you’re going to Newport, can I get a lift to college?”

“Er, I suppose. Dad’s in a lot of pain though. Can you be quick?”

“Fab. I’ll be down in two secs”

No questions about why I was going to hospital or what was the matter. Freya shows commendable compassion to other people - not least minorities and the LGTBQ community. She’s quite the progressive. Sadly, that compassion never seems to be extended to her father. My pain was irrelevant to her! That’s daughters for you - especially spoilt princess daughters called Freya.

I saw the hospital visit as an opportunity to investigate something else about the Island. (‘I’m writing a book - did I mention it?) What was the hospital like? I struggled into my trousers and hobbled to the car looking forward to asking doctors and nurses the same inane questions about living here I ask everyone.

Mrs. Griffiths successfully navigated the Coppins Bridge roundabout, only needing to circle it thrice before exiting correctly, and we arrived at St. Mary’s.

St. Mary’s is the one hospital on the Island. In 1936, twelve years before the advent of Nye Bevan’s National Health Service, there were 11 hospitals on the Isle of Wight, serving a population of around 88,000. A couple, such as the Royal National Hospital in Ventnor, served specifically patients with tuberculosis; others tended to children, infectious diseases, or were just general hospitals. By far the biggest number of beds in any of the 11 was 339, Whitecroft Hospital, whose remit was treating patients with mental illness, which Mrs. G agrees is worthy of comment. At the beginning of the 1930s, the Lunacy Act of 1890 was repealed and replaced with the Mental Treatment Act, the first step to viewing mental illness in a more enlightened way. Much of this was around terminology, with ‘lunatic’ giving way to ‘patient’, and ‘asylum’ to ‘hospital’. You didn’t have to be certified to be admitted - it could be done on a voluntary basis - and you could be admitted with milder symptoms. All of which may help to explain the high number of beds made available at Whitecroft Hospital.

Nearly a century later, I was impressed with the current St. Mary’s Hospital. Staff were efficient and I was treated fairly quickly by a variety of professionals from a variety of backgrounds, including Hungarian, Indian and Nigerian. There were only seven other patients in A & E when I arrived, which may make you fall off your chair with envy, if that’s a thing.

“Are there normally so few people?” I asked the nurse as she was about to take my blood pressure.

“There are normally a few more, but it’s a weekday morning so you got a little lucky. They do say that it’s quicker to drive over here from London and be treated than to go to a hospital where you live. Now no more questions. It can affect the reading.”

That’s amazing - if difficult to prove and somewhat anecdotal! While many of my  friends on the Island have had to go to Southampton for consultations (the ferry companies offer discounts for hospital appointments), I very much recommend you breaking your leg or getting a jam jar stuck up your jacksy over here. It’ll save you time in the long run, I promise.

So that’s Newport, our county town. It has a museum, a hospital, a prison, a college, a roundabout - and a jolly easy one way system. Oh, and just if you thought it was all a  bit normal, there’s a bookshop called the ‘Dead writers’ Detective Agency’. 

It’s not Genoa, of course, but  - and I’m sorry to buck the trend - we rather like it.