Isle of Wight Heritage

Newport IW FC lifted the Dr Martens Eastern Division title to carry Isle of Wight football to Step 3 of the non-league pyramid, on this day, some 25 years ago.

Once opened in a blaze of luxury and sophistication, today the Ocean Hotel stands as a fire-scarred ruin overlooking Sandown Bay.

A Parkhurst inmate with pro-IRA sympathies was found with chemicals, bomb-making material and a crude Molotov cocktail on 27th April 1996 - 30 years ago today.

Do you remember walking into a record shop, flicking through rows of vinyl and wondering how to spend your last few quid? For many Islanders, that place was Happy Daze in Newport...

A mother of 6 killed her husband with an axe at their Norton Green home, shocking the West Wight community, on 21st April 1946 - 80 years ago today.

Opened in 1864 on the Isle of Wight Railway’s first line, Brading station later became a busy junction before becoming one of the Island’s most intriguing railway survivors.

Britain’s worst post-war submarine disaster began with a routine dive off the Isle of Wight 75 years ago today.

Former Bembridge School captain Derek Lewin scored twice as Bishop Auckland won the FA Amateur Cup final replay on this day 70 years ago - on 14th April 1956.

Novelist Henry De Vere Stacpoole, who gifted Bonchurch Pond to the village, died on this day 75 years ago - 12th April 1951.

Long before supermarkets arrived on the Isle of Wight, one Newport family firm quietly created what was effectively the Island’s own grocery chain – Wray & Sons, a business that served Islanders for nearly two centuries.