ISLE OF WIGHT SHOPS: ORCHARD BROS – THE WEST WIGHT STORE THAT CONNECTED AN EMPRESS WITH A POET

Standing on Victoria Road, Orchard Bros is one of the Isle of Wight’s most enduring village shops, trading from the same premises for more than 150 years.

The building began life around 1845 as a private residence known as Alexandra House. By 1865, it had become a grocery business, taken on by William Orchard and later bought outright at auction at what is now the Albion Hotel.

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But step back to 1865, and the epoch it opened into feels a world away.

Queen Victoria had already been on the throne for nearly 30 years and was a regular visitor to the Isle of Wight, staying at Osborne House. The Island was becoming a fashionable destination, with steam ferries bringing increasing numbers of visitors across the Solent.

The railway had only just arrived on the Island, linking Newport and Cowes in 1862. Freshwater itself remained relatively remote, with no railway until 1888, meaning everything sold in the shop had to arrive by road or sea.

Inside the shop, shopping was a slower, more personal affair. There were no packets, tins or barcodes. Tea, sugar and flour were weighed out by hand while customers stood at the counter as orders were assembled from drawers and barrels.

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A Victorian account book shows just how different those early purchases were. Customers regularly bought items that would seem unusual today, and often in small quantities, reflecting the need to shop frequently.

Some of the goods on sale would raise eyebrows today. Potted meats included pheasant and partridge, sperm candles were made from whale oil, and saltpetre was sold for preserving meat. Everyday essentials included soda, starch and “blue” for washing, while isinglass was used to preserve eggs for months.

Within just a few years, the shop found itself at the centre of something much bigger.

By 1870 Freshwater needed its own post office, and the decision over where to place it prompted a remarkable letter from pioneering photographer Julia Margaret Cameron.

She argued strongly that the post office should be based at Orchard’s shop, pointing out that the area was the centre of local correspondence, not least because of her neighbour, Alfred, Lord Tennyson at nearby Farringford.

She described the premises as ideally situated and the Orchard family as reliable and businesslike – a recommendation that carried real influence at the time.

The recommendation worked. The Post Office was established at Orchard Bros, placing the shop at the centre of village life – and at the heart of communications involving some of the most famous figures of the age.

Later recollections from the Orchard family reveal just how significant that role became:

“I remember receiving quite a number of telegrams over the wire from Queen Victoria to the poet… usually to ask Tennyson to lunch or dine.”

Behind the scenes, the work was anything but easy.

A teenage member of the Orchard family, recalling his early duties, described delivering telegrams across the West Wight:

“Have walked over to Brook House lots of times, and several times to Pitt Place, Brighstone… Can you see a boy nowadays walking to deliver telegrams six miles – and return?”

These journeys were made in all weathers, long before bicycles were in common use.

Alongside the post office, the business expanded. It became not just a grocer, but a supplier of coal, wine and spirits, and even offered banking and house-letting services.

The bakery became a key part of the operation, particularly after the 1930s when a new bakehouse was created from the old stables. At one time, two bakers were employed, producing bread, cakes and pastries for customers across the West Wight.

One long-standing memory captures the simple pleasure of that:

“My father would go up to Orchards’ bakehouse after a walk down to the sea and bring home a hot loaf… as the butter melted into the bread he would say ‘there you are nipper, now get that back!’”

Even extreme conditions did not stop the shop. During the winter of 1963, deliveries were made through deep snowdrifts across the countryside, with drivers navigating what were described as tunnels of snow in places.

Stories also survive of an earlier blizzard when supplies to Brighstone were delivered by boat after roads became impassable – a reminder of the lengths the business would go to serve its customers.

That determination became part of the shop’s reputation.

One customer later recalled:

“He took the name and address and some weeks later the goods arrived in Australia… my friend never forgot this wonderful service.”

Today, Orchard Bros continues to trade from its Victorian premises – a rare survivor from a very different age, where a village shop once helped carry messages between a queen and a poet.

If you live in west Wight, what are your recollections of Orchard Bros?