I don’t mean that I lived in the house – it had no doors, windows or roof when I “moved in” in 1982 – but it was where I learned to live life to the fullest. I was an impressionable nine year-old, in the summer of 1982, when I bought a ticket to explore the ruin that I could see from my Wroxall bedroom window. That Saturday I had ditched children’s television and walked to the crumbling remains of
the Worsley obelisk on Appuldurcombe Down with my friend Simon Wiggins before descending to Freemantle Gate and deciding to visit the historic house. Custodian Peter Wilkinson took our admission fee and told us to follow the gravel drive to the porte-cochere on the west facade. Before we set off Pete, dressed in his blue Department of the Environment uniform reminiscent of a police officer, offered to “run through the history” and show us a small exhibition mounted in the ticket office by a previous custodian. I accepted Pete’s offer, asking for the talk before we went down to the remains of the house, because it would help me put what I was seeing in perspective. I was overwhelmed with the veritable Aladdin’s cave of prints and photographs which had been amassed by former Appuldurcombe custodian Dennis Cooper, before his retirement, as well as historic documents and artifacts relating to the history of the estate, including animal traps. Pete had me hooked with the revelation that the ruined was, in fact, the “new house”, which had replaced a much older building in 1701. The origins of the “old house” had been lost in the mists of time. Pete’s 15-minute history lesson, delivered with humour and enthusiasm, had me raring to see what was left of the house that had suffered such catastrophic damage during the Second World War. Although I had visited Appuldurcombe before I could not remember the previous trip, except that my father, Roy, had spent time yarning with relief custodian Pat Rann, who had once lived in the village. I was surprised to see how much of the architecture was left after a German sea mine had done its worst in 1943. We approached from the south, where a demolished laundry block had taken the brunt of the explosion, peering through the glassless windows as we walked around to the main entrance at the east facade. I was immediately taken by the Satyr’s mask above what was once the bull’s-eye window over the main entrance into the Great Hall. The mythical beast, framed by foliage swells, looked as if it had been carved the previous day, rather than 281 years earlier, as did the impressive drapery either side of it. Then the detailing in the capitals of the columns which punctuated the building captivated me and I was staggered at just how fresh they appeared. We marveled at the workmanship as the shell of the house reminded me of a skull with empty eye sockets. We climbed into vacant alcoves where statues once stood. Entering the Great Hall was a strange experience. Looking up at the chimneys against a backdrop of floating white clouds, from inside what was the grandest room of the house, gave me the ominous feeling that the building was collapsing in on me. I couldn't quite get the hang of the feeling, so began looking down and taking in the wondrous marble floor in the Great Hall, fresh from a Wilkinson bleaching first thing that morning. I stood in the compass centerpiece trying to figure out which way was north. To my left was a row of four cracked red columns encased in corrugated-iron-clad scaffolding to protect them from the elements but scarring the 1781 floor with orange rust caused by dripping water. The house’s only remaining staircase, behind the Great Hall, was alluring if only because its four flights of well-worn stairs went nowhere. At the top Victorian vandals had been joined by their contemporaries to etch their names or initials in the brickwork. While the pavilions on the eastern facade held their own fascination, since they contained the dining and drawing rooms, the library on the southern facade was curious with its sunken well into the cellar where wooden stairs once ran, an exposed secret passageway my great grandmother had seen when the house was still intact in the west wall and two rows of joist marks where the ceiling had been raised in the 1780s. No longer a secret, the passageway that was once concealed by a revolving bookcase led into the south western pavilion labelled “Sir Richard’s Bath”. The north western pavilion contained kitchen with a mammoth fireplace punctuated by indentations where a rotary spit once stood. The house was old and sad but once I got used to that I was comfortable there. On our way out we called back into the exhibition where Pete answered more questions. Within weeks we had returned, offering to help Pete with his duties on a Saturday morning including removing slimy w**d from the fish pond, bleaching the Great Hall floor, w**ding and raking the gravel in other parts of the house and keeping the gravel paths tidy. Pete helped us as we consumed LOJ Boynton’s academic (for a nine-year-old) handbook and shared anecdotes that had not made it to press. In no time Simon and I had become authorities on Appuldurcombe House and Pete was offering our informal services as guides to the occasional visitor. My most prominent visitor was Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, Chairman of English Heritage, which had taken the building into its care in 1984, but one of the most exciting days of my life came in 1986 when English Heritage began work on re-glazing and re-roofing the oldest part of the building. The bulls-eye window would again be glazed, the Great Hall’s floor protected from the rain and the columns restored to their former glory. I made it my mission, in the year that followed, to inspect the work daily and record the progress, gaining access to parts of the building that had been inaccessible for nearly half a century. English Heritage made me an “official guide” that summer, issuing me with a name badge and T-shirt, after I had sent the area manager a recording of my guided tour. I put my knowledge into words in 1989 when The Islander magazine published a four-part series on the history of Appuldurcombe, as I studied in the lodge which housed the ticket office or under a tree for my GCSE examinations. I revised and updated my history in 1991 for the South Wight Chronicle, which published it in seven parts, at the same time as I studied for my A’ levels. I left Appuldurcombe behind for a while in September 1991, to train to be a journalist at what was then West Surrey College of Art and Design in Farnham. I finished my training in 1993, in time to be offered the role of key keeper at Appuldurcombe, and was paid an honorarium to keep an eye on the building at all hours of the day and night. It was a welcome boost for a would-be journalist who had been unable to secure work due to the recession of the early 1990s. In early 1994, after Pete had retired, I was offered the custodian’s job, but left when the Isle of Wight County Press came calling in July of that year. I left for New Zealand in 2001, and am still in touch with Pete, making a point of visiting both him and Appuldurcombe when I returned to the Isle of Wight for all-too-short holidays in 2003, 2009 and 2012
Over the years my familiarity with the subject grew, as I combed books, rifled through ancient documents at the Isle of Wight Records Office and collected anecdotes from the occasional visitor who had links to the estate. I am now working on the definitive history of Appuldurcombe.
