Isle of Wight Heritage

Missing 12-year-old schoolgirl Margaret Clarke was found safe and well in Ryde after a 4-day search involving 500 Police officers, it was reported on 9th September 1954. Margaret - from Birmingham - had been holidaying in Bournemouth with her parents,...

Island Echo examines the colourful career of Jabez Spencer Balfour, whose Liberator company enclosed Brading Haven before he fled to Argentina and was imprisoned in Parkhurst for a multi-million-pound fraud. Did you know that the man who built the embankment...

Crowds of holidaymakers lined the coasts of the Isle of Wight to witness a burning ship according to newspaper reports of 6th September1924. The 2,626 German steamship Bosphorus was sighted 2 miles off the Needles flying the signal: “I am...

50 years ago an inquest heard that warning signs and ropes at Alum Bay had been ignored leading to the death of 9-year-old Sandra Grant of Rainham. The Isle of Wight Mercury reported on 4th September 1974 that many adults...

Island Echo examines the 4 current licensed premises in Yarmouth - the settlement with the highest density of pubs per person in the whole of the Isle of Wight. The population of Yarmouth (according to the 2011 census) is just...

Albany Prison inmate Jim Gilbert left incarceration on the Isle of Wight to collect £8,000 (£73,000 in today's values) on 30th August 1974. However, the money Jim Gilbert collected was not the ill-gotten gains of crime, but rather money he...

Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, great uncle of King Charles III and Governor of the Isle of Wight, was murdered by the IRA on this day 45 years ago - 27th August 1979. Irish Republican killer Thomas McMahon...

Britain's most feared prisoner, serial killer Robert Maudsley - aka Hannibal the Cannibal - has twice been behind bars on the Isle of Wight. The killer-of-4 is said to hold the world record for years spent in solitary confinement: 46...

In this week's edition of Isle of Wight pubs, Island Echo examines some of Shanklin's historic inns, a few of which date back to the time when the seaside resort was no more than a small village. Up until the...

In this weeks edition of Parkhurst Prisoners, Island Echo looks at the remarkable career of Brynley Fussell, who briefly became the world's most famous pilot. The story of Bryn Fussell stealing a plane from Bembridge Aerodrome has already been told...