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Local history - Cowes, Isle of Wight
Every building tells a story and as well as illustrating interesting buildings, it's fascinating to learn more about who lived in them and what sort of life they led. This history section has been researched through old photographs, postcards, newspaper advertisements and articles from websites, newspapers, censuses and trade directories.
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Rosetta, Queen's Road, Cowes
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This is quick marker pen sketch of the beautiful Rosetta Cottage, right on the seafront at Queen’s Road, Cowes.
According to a leaflet Bricks and Mortar, Rosetta Cottage was once a works office for a local rope maker who built a 1,000 ft long rope walk which ran east along what is now Queens Road (a ropewalk is a long straight narrow pathway where strands of material are laid out to be twisted into rope)
The first known occupant for Rosetta House was Robert Dambrill, a retired master mariner from Newfoundland, Canada. Robert lived there with his wife Jane and daughters Louisa and Emily, all from Cheshire/Lancashire. The 1871 records the address as Solent Cottage, however various electoral roles 1866-75 record the Dambrills living at Rosetta, freehold house and land. Jane died in 1878, and Robert in 1880.
In 1873, Rosetta was rented for Cowes Week by Mr Leonard Jerome, the millionaire proprietor of the New York Times. The family were invited to an afternoon ball on the guard ship HMS Ariadne which was anchored off Cowes. Jennie, eldest daughter of Jerome, danced with Lord Randolph Churchill. Churchill proposed just 3 days later, they were married the next year and Winston Churchill was born later that year.
By 1881, Robert Dambrill’s son William W Dambrill, a retired silk thrower had moved down from Cheshire to live at Rosetta with his wife Marianne and daughter Amy. They remained at Rosetta until at least 1891, but when William died in 1895, Marianne and daughter Amy moved to Melville Street, Ryde to live with Marianne’s brother from at least 1901 to 1911.
In 1901 Rosetta Cottage was empty and ready to be let furnished. In 1908 it was occupied by General and Lady Barbara Chetwynd-Stapylton during regatta week.
By 1909 Captain Spencer de Horsey lived at Rosetta House with his wife Cecila Jane, and whilst living there they had two children. Spencer Victor York de Horsey, born in Cowes, was the son of Algernon de Horsey, a naval admiral and owner of nearby Melcombe House, Queens Road (now apartments). Admiral Sir Algernon Frederick Rous de Horsey KCB was a notable Admiral in the Royal Nay and was ADC to Queen Victoria from 1871 to 1875, chairman of the Isle of Wight magistrates for many years and also Deputy Lieutenant of the Island in 1913. Algernon De Horsey was an early campaigner for a Cowes Harbour breakwater and published a booklet, ‘Proposed Breakwater for Cowes Harbour and and suggestions for the establishment of a Harbour Board,’ 1894.
Grace Adeline Rouse Hotham lived at Rosetta in the 1930s with her daughter Rachel, a theological tutor. Grace was the daughter of Admiral Sir Algernon, and having been married to a Naval Captain Algernon Hotham, she was a widow by 1939.
Rosetta is now split into Rosetta cottage and East Rosetta Rosetta and both are magnificent holiday rental cottages, available to rent through the National Trust.
This is quick marker pen sketch of the beautiful Rosetta Cottage, right on the seafront at Queen’s Road, Cowes.
According to a leaflet Bricks and Mortar, Rosetta Cottage was once a works office for a local rope maker who built a 1,000 ft long rope walk which ran east along what is now Queens Road (a ropewalk is a long straight narrow pathway where strands of material are laid out to be twisted into rope)
The first known occupant for Rosetta House was Robert Dambrill, a retired master mariner from Newfoundland, Canada. Robert lived there with his wife Jane and daughters Louisa and Emily, all from Cheshire/Lancashire. The 1871 records the address as Solent Cottage, however various electoral roles 1866-75 record the Dambrills living at Rosetta, freehold house and land. Jane died in 1878, and Robert in 1880.
In 1873, Rosetta was rented for Cowes Week by Mr Leonard Jerome, the millionaire proprietor of the New York Times. The family were invited to an afternoon ball on the guard ship HMS Ariadne which was anchored off Cowes. Jennie, eldest daughter of Jerome, danced with Lord Randolph Churchill. Churchill proposed just 3 days later, they were married the next year and Winston Churchill was born later that year.
By 1881, Robert Dambrill’s son William W Dambrill, a retired silk thrower had moved down from Cheshire to live at Rosetta with his wife Marianne and daughter Amy. They remained at Rosetta until at least 1891, but when William died in 1895, Marianne and daughter Amy moved to Melville Street, Ryde to live with Marianne’s brother from at least 1901 to 1911.
In 1901 Rosetta Cottage was empty and ready to be let furnished. In 1908 it was occupied by General and Lady Barbara Chetwynd-Stapylton during regatta week.
By 1909 Captain Spencer de Horsey lived at Rosetta House with his wife Cecila Jane, and whilst living there they had two children. Spencer Victor York de Horsey, born in Cowes, was the son of Algernon de Horsey, a naval admiral and owner of nearby Melcombe House, Queens Road (now apartments). Admiral Sir Algernon Frederick Rous de Horsey KCB was a notable Admiral in the Royal Nay and was ADC to Queen Victoria from 1871 to 1875, chairman of the Isle of Wight magistrates for many years and also Deputy Lieutenant of the Island in 1913. Algernon De Horsey was an early campaigner for a Cowes Harbour breakwater and published a booklet, ‘Proposed Breakwater for Cowes Harbour and and suggestions for the establishment of a Harbour Board,’ 1894.
Grace Adeline Rouse Hotham lived at Rosetta in the 1930s with her daughter Rachel, a theological tutor. Grace was the daughter of Admiral Sir Algernon, and having been married to a Naval Captain Algernon Hotham, she was a widow by 1939.
Rosetta is now split into Rosetta cottage and East Rosetta Rosetta and both are magnificent holiday rental cottages, available to rent through the National Trust.
The Boathouse, Queen's Road, Cowes
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This marker pen sketch is of the Boathouse, Queens Road, Cowes.
According to historian John Groves, the Boathouse was a cottage built to accommodate servants working at Stanhope House, as well as a boat! Censuses from 1901 and 1939 show that the house was inhabited by gardeners and maids, most probably working at Stanhope.
Mr Groves suggests that the house was owned jointly by Ladies Blanche and Frances Stanhope who lived at Stanhope. Apparently, at one time the Boathouse was rented out to a woman who kept a vey high class ‘disorderly house’ during Cowes Week! According to a newspaper article upon her death in 1939, Blanche and her sister Frances were ‘well known for the number of society people they entertained during Regatta Week’.
This marker pen sketch is of the Boathouse, Queens Road, Cowes.
According to historian John Groves, the Boathouse was a cottage built to accommodate servants working at Stanhope House, as well as a boat! Censuses from 1901 and 1939 show that the house was inhabited by gardeners and maids, most probably working at Stanhope.
Mr Groves suggests that the house was owned jointly by Ladies Blanche and Frances Stanhope who lived at Stanhope. Apparently, at one time the Boathouse was rented out to a woman who kept a vey high class ‘disorderly house’ during Cowes Week! According to a newspaper article upon her death in 1939, Blanche and her sister Frances were ‘well known for the number of society people they entertained during Regatta Week’.
The West Cowes Sea Bathing Company, Queen's Road, Cowes
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This stunning building is the West Cowes Sea Bathing Company.
Sea water bathing was very popular in Victorian times, and to capture the market, The West Cowes Sea Bathing Company opened in the 1860s at Shore End, Queens Road. The building still stands, to the left of what is now the New Hollywood Hotel, although the veranda has been demolished.
Plans were concluded about 1868, and a tender went out for a steam engine, boiler and other parts for the proposed baths. A steam pump was sunk into a chamber about 9ft deep so they could get water at all times, including at low tide, to the swimming bath. The bath was warm and could be used in winter as well as summer.
The company was divided into 451 shares which initially performed well. Key shareholders were businessmen of Cowes including Mssrs Damant, Moore, Aktkey, Redfern, May, Dear and several others. By 1905 however, the company was in liquidation and The Baths, which included the house, the rights on the foreshore and the goodwill of the bathing business was auctioned by Marvins, who ‘knocked it down to £570’. All of the fittings including furniture, carpets, feather beds, bed and table linen, were also auctioned and later that year, the bathing equipment was also sold including 14 bathing machines, iron winches, weight machine a 12 ft boat and about 20 dozen towels. The Bathing Company had not been a paying concern, the establishment with hot-water swimming baths was expensive, ‘with costly appurtenances which nobody used or wanted’.
Sea bathing was still popular however, but Cowes was increasingly not welcoming to bathers. A letter by Algernon de Horsey to the County Press in 1905 urges the fellow residents of Cowes to take immediate steps to ‘reinstitute sea-bathing from the existing bathing machines’, otherwise ‘many will stay away who would otherwise be glad to reside at Cowes during the summer for the sake of the bathing’.
This stunning building is the West Cowes Sea Bathing Company.
Sea water bathing was very popular in Victorian times, and to capture the market, The West Cowes Sea Bathing Company opened in the 1860s at Shore End, Queens Road. The building still stands, to the left of what is now the New Hollywood Hotel, although the veranda has been demolished.
Plans were concluded about 1868, and a tender went out for a steam engine, boiler and other parts for the proposed baths. A steam pump was sunk into a chamber about 9ft deep so they could get water at all times, including at low tide, to the swimming bath. The bath was warm and could be used in winter as well as summer.
The company was divided into 451 shares which initially performed well. Key shareholders were businessmen of Cowes including Mssrs Damant, Moore, Aktkey, Redfern, May, Dear and several others. By 1905 however, the company was in liquidation and The Baths, which included the house, the rights on the foreshore and the goodwill of the bathing business was auctioned by Marvins, who ‘knocked it down to £570’. All of the fittings including furniture, carpets, feather beds, bed and table linen, were also auctioned and later that year, the bathing equipment was also sold including 14 bathing machines, iron winches, weight machine a 12 ft boat and about 20 dozen towels. The Bathing Company had not been a paying concern, the establishment with hot-water swimming baths was expensive, ‘with costly appurtenances which nobody used or wanted’.
Sea bathing was still popular however, but Cowes was increasingly not welcoming to bathers. A letter by Algernon de Horsey to the County Press in 1905 urges the fellow residents of Cowes to take immediate steps to ‘reinstitute sea-bathing from the existing bathing machines’, otherwise ‘many will stay away who would otherwise be glad to reside at Cowes during the summer for the sake of the bathing’.
St Mary the Virgin Church, Cowes
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This is St Mary the Virgin Church, Cowes near Northwood House.
The original church was built in 1657 and an additional chancel (area around the altar) was designed by Joseph Richards and added in 1811.
In 1816 the west tower was added which was designed by John Nash in of Greek style in Portland Stone, a style ‘so unlike Nash’ according to author Pevsner. The tower was given by George Ward of Northwood House, as the family mausoleum and the interior contains memorial tables to the Ward family.
John Nash was one of the foremost British architects of the era (and is famous for Brighton Pavilion, Marble Arch, Buckingham Palace. In 1798, he purchased a plot of land of 30 acres in East Cowes on which he built East Cowes Castle where he retired to and later died in 1835. Nash is buried in the churchyard of St James’s Churchin East Cowes, which he built in 1831.
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In 1867 the whole of St Mary’s Church except for the west tower was rebuilt in Gothic Revival style by the architect Arthur Cates.
This is St Mary the Virgin Church, Cowes near Northwood House.
The original church was built in 1657 and an additional chancel (area around the altar) was designed by Joseph Richards and added in 1811.
In 1816 the west tower was added which was designed by John Nash in of Greek style in Portland Stone, a style ‘so unlike Nash’ according to author Pevsner. The tower was given by George Ward of Northwood House, as the family mausoleum and the interior contains memorial tables to the Ward family.
John Nash was one of the foremost British architects of the era (and is famous for Brighton Pavilion, Marble Arch, Buckingham Palace. In 1798, he purchased a plot of land of 30 acres in East Cowes on which he built East Cowes Castle where he retired to and later died in 1835. Nash is buried in the churchyard of St James’s Churchin East Cowes, which he built in 1831.
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In 1867 the whole of St Mary’s Church except for the west tower was rebuilt in Gothic Revival style by the architect Arthur Cates.
The Terrace, The Parade, Cowes
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This elegant building once stood on the Parade (also called Victoria Parade) in Cowes. Often called the New Terrace on postcards, it appears to have consisted of at least 7 terraced houses, from at least the 1880s until the 1920s.
In 1924, the two houses on the left numbers 6 & 7 housed a boarding school, Solent House Boarding and Day School, run by Margaret H Caws and her sister Cecil. The school was established sometime after 1911, and by 1937, had moved to a large detached house, Cambridge House by Trinity Church in Queen’s Road. Margaret (1887-) and Cecil (1888-) were the daughters of Samuel Dawson Caws, a draper who also ran the Pier View Hotel in Cowes Town. Their step mother was Marion Helena (nee Ratsey), a school governess and daughter of Eliza Ratsey, principal of another ladies school in Cowes. Margaret was a Registered Teacher and Cecil was the house mistress of the Solent House School, which offered, ‘large and lofty classrooms with balconies facing the sea’. There was a large sheltered garden where classes were held during the summer terms. Individual attention was given to each pupil, and the school offered, ‘excellent diet, open-air life, modern education’.
Number 5 was the home of James Wasdale Hudson, a physician & surgeon.
Numbers 3 & 4 were the home of John B Aubrey.
On the right side of the terrace, houses number 1 & 2 were combined into the clubhouse for the Royal London Yacht Club. Established as the London Yacht Club on the Thames in 1845, the club moved to Cowes in 1882 and leased the two houses. This section of the Terrace has survived and continues to be the RLYC Clubhouse today.
By the 1930s, the Terrace, except numbers 1 & 2, the Royal London Yacht Club, were demolished. They were replaced by Osborne Court, a large Art Deco block of flats which was offered for rental in the late 1930s and featured Club facilities including a cocktail bar and gymnasium.
This elegant building once stood on the Parade (also called Victoria Parade) in Cowes. Often called the New Terrace on postcards, it appears to have consisted of at least 7 terraced houses, from at least the 1880s until the 1920s.
In 1924, the two houses on the left numbers 6 & 7 housed a boarding school, Solent House Boarding and Day School, run by Margaret H Caws and her sister Cecil. The school was established sometime after 1911, and by 1937, had moved to a large detached house, Cambridge House by Trinity Church in Queen’s Road. Margaret (1887-) and Cecil (1888-) were the daughters of Samuel Dawson Caws, a draper who also ran the Pier View Hotel in Cowes Town. Their step mother was Marion Helena (nee Ratsey), a school governess and daughter of Eliza Ratsey, principal of another ladies school in Cowes. Margaret was a Registered Teacher and Cecil was the house mistress of the Solent House School, which offered, ‘large and lofty classrooms with balconies facing the sea’. There was a large sheltered garden where classes were held during the summer terms. Individual attention was given to each pupil, and the school offered, ‘excellent diet, open-air life, modern education’.
Number 5 was the home of James Wasdale Hudson, a physician & surgeon.
Numbers 3 & 4 were the home of John B Aubrey.
On the right side of the terrace, houses number 1 & 2 were combined into the clubhouse for the Royal London Yacht Club. Established as the London Yacht Club on the Thames in 1845, the club moved to Cowes in 1882 and leased the two houses. This section of the Terrace has survived and continues to be the RLYC Clubhouse today.
By the 1930s, the Terrace, except numbers 1 & 2, the Royal London Yacht Club, were demolished. They were replaced by Osborne Court, a large Art Deco block of flats which was offered for rental in the late 1930s and featured Club facilities including a cocktail bar and gymnasium.
The Royal Marine Hotel, The Parade, Cowes
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The Marine Hotel was reportedly one of the oldest hostelries on the Isle of Wight. The earliest mention of it in press is around 1809 when it held auctions for timber, but possible records suggest it was in existence as an inn as far back as the reign of Henry VIII. It was clearly a very prestigious hotel and the place to stay in Cowes. Fashionable Society travelled from all over the country to stay there, and their journeys were documented in newspapers at the time.
The hotel sat on the Parade (where Number 1 the Parade apartments now sit), opposite the then Victoria Pier, with an outlook over the harbour and across the Solent. Photographs of the hotel over the years show the hotel continually expanding sideways and upwards, eventually to be four floors high. In the late 1900s, it contained about one hundred rooms, spacious dining, drawing, smoking and other public rooms besides numerous bedrooms and private apartments ‘en suite’. The proprietress at the time, Miss Drover had commanded about a hundred rooms outside of the hotel, but during the Cowes season, the patronage was so large that even these extensive resources frequently proved insufficient for the accommodation for the many visitors. In the late 1900s it was the first hotel to have electric lights and an article of the time says that, ‘the large arc lamp suspended outside the hotel is, when lighted, a constant attraction to the purely local population’!
Notable clientele included HRH the Prince of Wales, Prince Louis Napoleon and Princess Eugenie, the Comte de Paris, the Duc de Chartre, the Crown Prince of Saxony, various dignitary from Foreign embassies and diplomatic representatives of almost every Continental country (for those of you who do not know Cowes, Queen Victoria had her palace Osbourne at nearby East Cowes).
Long standing proprietors included the Helmore family for about 30 years (around 1828-1851) and the Aris family for about 15 years (around 1855-70). Around 1871 James Drover took over the hotel and it was known as Drovers Marine Hotel, the Drover family stayed there until around 1898. By the 1880s the hotel was known as the Royal Marine Hotel.
The Marine Hotel was reportedly one of the oldest hostelries on the Isle of Wight. The earliest mention of it in press is around 1809 when it held auctions for timber, but possible records suggest it was in existence as an inn as far back as the reign of Henry VIII. It was clearly a very prestigious hotel and the place to stay in Cowes. Fashionable Society travelled from all over the country to stay there, and their journeys were documented in newspapers at the time.
The hotel sat on the Parade (where Number 1 the Parade apartments now sit), opposite the then Victoria Pier, with an outlook over the harbour and across the Solent. Photographs of the hotel over the years show the hotel continually expanding sideways and upwards, eventually to be four floors high. In the late 1900s, it contained about one hundred rooms, spacious dining, drawing, smoking and other public rooms besides numerous bedrooms and private apartments ‘en suite’. The proprietress at the time, Miss Drover had commanded about a hundred rooms outside of the hotel, but during the Cowes season, the patronage was so large that even these extensive resources frequently proved insufficient for the accommodation for the many visitors. In the late 1900s it was the first hotel to have electric lights and an article of the time says that, ‘the large arc lamp suspended outside the hotel is, when lighted, a constant attraction to the purely local population’!
Notable clientele included HRH the Prince of Wales, Prince Louis Napoleon and Princess Eugenie, the Comte de Paris, the Duc de Chartre, the Crown Prince of Saxony, various dignitary from Foreign embassies and diplomatic representatives of almost every Continental country (for those of you who do not know Cowes, Queen Victoria had her palace Osbourne at nearby East Cowes).
Long standing proprietors included the Helmore family for about 30 years (around 1828-1851) and the Aris family for about 15 years (around 1855-70). Around 1871 James Drover took over the hotel and it was known as Drovers Marine Hotel, the Drover family stayed there until around 1898. By the 1880s the hotel was known as the Royal Marine Hotel.
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