SEPTEMBER 2025

LOST HOUSES OF EAST COWES

In 1841, developer George Eyre Brooks bought Shamblers farm, East Cowes, and started the Botanic Gardens scheme.  Several impressive houses were built on the new Albert Grove, now York Avenue, which have since been demolished.  The buildings were all on plots of land with at least 100feet of frontage and 300feet depth, each with their own supply of water from a well.

The first house on the left as you go up hill was Medina Villa.  In the 1920s and 30s this became a private day school for girls, with boys up to the age of 11. The girls wore cream-coloured dresses with pale green edgings during the summer.  At the Heritage Centre we have unused report forms and a prospectus which shows that the pupils could take extra lessons in piano.  Connie Tennant was one of these and put her piano skills to good use helping at St James Church.   Above Medina Villa was Olinda Villa, and then Park House was the next house going up on the left.  The Hon. Henry Petrie lived in this house in the 1850s and was part of the team who, in 1859, initiated the steam Floating Bridge between East and West Cowes, a useful money-making enterprise in those days! In the early 1900s the Admiralty owned both Olinda Villa and Park House and were using them to accommodate staff as part of the Osborne Naval College.  Park House was described as “Sick Quarters,” with two Queen Alexander Nursing Sisters and a Surgeon Commander in residence.  Later it housed Saunders Roe staff.

May Villa

These three villas were demolished soon after WWII.  Newport Villa was the fourth large house on the left.  It survived until 1989 before making way for a new block of flats. At the top of the hill on the left there already was an Osborne Cottage next to Shamblers Farm.  It was a “Cottage Ornée”, and appears in Repton’s sketch book, so may have been designed by John Nash.  In 1831 and 1833 Sir John Conroy stayed there when Princess Victoria and her mother were on holiday at Norris Castle.  Osborne Cottage was bought into the Osborne Estate in 1845 and in 1856 it was demolished and the present Osborne Cottage built. 

Newport Villa

Original Osborne Cottage

Opposite the present Osborne Cottage was Carlton Villa, later called May Villa.   Also purchased by the Osborne Estate, repairs were carried out in 1893.  It became home to Sir John Reid and his wife, when Sir John was attending Queen Victoria during her final illness at Osborne in January 1901.  He had been her personal physician for twenty years, and it was at her wish that he privately placed a photograph of the highlander John Brown in the Queen’s hand in her coffin, hidden under flowers.  Sir John Reid walked beside the coffin as the funeral cortege made its way down York Avenue from Osborne House to the Trinity House Depot, watched by 40,000 people.  The RY Alberta took the Queen’s coffin across the Solent.  Kersey Court occupies the site of May Villa today.

Sarah Burdett