In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Arreton like this:
ARRETON, or Atherton, a village and a parish in the Isle of Wight. The village stands 2¾ miles SE of Newport; consists of a long straggling street, leading down to the river Main; and has a post office under New port. The parish contains also the hamlet of Biddles ford. Acres, 8,833. Real property, £12,527. ...
Pop., 1,880. Houses, 385. Arreton Down, adjacent to the NW end of the village, forms part of the range of chalk hills, extending from Culver Cliff to the Needles; commands an extensive and very brilliant view; and is crowned by two barrows. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Winchester. Value, £220.* Patron, J. Fleming, Esq. The church stands in a vale at the foot of the Down, at the head of the village; is an ancient structure, in mixed Norman and early English, with a low tower of perpendicular date; and contains some fine monuments of the family of Holmes, and a curious brass of a knight of 1430. It was one of the six churches given by Fitz-Osborne, soon after the Conquest, to the Abbey of Lire in Normandy. A school has £37 from endowment, and other charities £27. Elizabeth Wall bridge, the "Dairyman's Danghter" of the Rev. Leigh Richmond's well-known narrative, was a native. Her father's cottage is on the right of the road to Sandown; and her grave is in the churchyard, marked by a head stone, with an epitaph from the pen of her biographer, beginning,-
Stranger! if e'er by chance or feeling led,
Upon this hallowed turf thy footsteps tread,
Turn from the contemplation of the sod,
And think on her whose spirit rests with God.
Arreton through time
Arreton is now part of the Isle of Wight district. Click here for graphs and data of how the Isle of Wight has changed over two centuries. For statistics about Arreton itself, go to Units and Statistics.
GB Historical GIS / University of Portsmouth, History of Arreton, in The the Isle of Wight and Hampshire | Map and description, A Vision of Britain through Time.
URL: https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/1743
Date accessed: 20th April 2024
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