Isle of Wight Attractions

The good weather attracts numerous holiday-makers throughout the year, with the best time for visits being spring, when the flora is lush, and autumn, when the cooler temperatures better suit long walks through the varied landscape. The island is most crowded in August, when the famous regatta week takes place at Cowes.

Car and passenger ferries depart from Portsmouth, Southampton and Lymington. The hovercraft journey from Southsea to Ryde only takes a few minutes. Excursion boats ply their trade around the island during the season - the finest views of the island are to be had from the sea. Bus companies also offer tours of the island. Good roads and public buses ensure easy movement around the island, although visitors should try to make use of the marvelous paths here.

Until approximately 6000 B.C. the island remained linked to Hampshire on the mainland, and the Solent, now a channel, was a river valley. There is evidence of temporary settlements from after the mid-Stone Age, after the channel between the island and the mainland had opened up. A number of tumuli (including those south of Arreton and Niton Downs, Brook Down and on the southwest coast) date from the beginning of the Bronze Age (about 2000 B.C.). An Iron Age settlement was found at Chillerton Downs.

The first written mention of the Isle of Wight was made by Sueton, who reported Vespasian's conquest of the island of Vectis in A.D. 43. Several Roman villas, e.g. at Brading and Newport, show evidence of the Roman way of life. After the Romans departed in about 410 the island is supposed, according to contemporary chronicles, to have belonged first to the kingdom of Wessex, until 1100, when, after the Norman conquest, it was given as a royal favor to the Redvers family. After the family had died out ownership of the island returned to the Crown until 1293 and it was subsequently ruled by royal administrators, while the native islanders earned their money by "free trading", smuggling and the salvage of flotsam and jetsam. The coronation of Henry Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, by Henry VI as king of the Isle of Wight was of little significance, as this royal favorite died after only seven years. Repeated French attacks laid waste to the island, the final one at the beginning of 1545 destroying Wolverton. The coastal fortresses then built by Henry VIII at Cowes, Freshwater, Sandown and Yarmouth secured the island thereafter.

In the English Civil War the islanders supported Oliver Cromwell, who imprisoned King Charles I in Carisbrook Castle from November 1647 until shortly before his execution in London in January 1649. After the restoration of the monarchy the island fell into obscurity from the end of the 17th century until the Royal Family discovered the Isle of Wight in 1845 as a holiday home. Queen Victoria often spent summers here with her husband, Prince Albert, who himself planned their summer residence Osborne House in East Cowes.

Since 1890 the island has had the status of a county. Its fertile soil is well used agriculturally, and there are also some small industries here (shipbuilding, construction of small aeroplanes, electrical engineering), which, combined with tourism (in excess of a million visitors a year excluding day-trippers), form the economic base of the island.