The Ventnor and District Local History Society’s latest publication is a new and expanded edition of George Roland Haynes’s It Used To Be Like This, the classic memoir of life in Niton Undercliff in the early 1900s.
George Haynes was born in 1906 in Castle Haven, Niton Undercliff, and in old age he wrote down memories of his youth, saying,
“Already the lifestyle of my childhood is beyond the grasp of the young people of today.
“So here it is, one life among the many. I have written all that I thought should be recorded before it is completely forgotten, about things that are now totally gone.”
He depicts a community where most employment came from the big houses of the Undercliff, while describing in detail the craft and skills involved in fishing and farming, which were almost unchanged since the 1800s.
Ordinary events remembered with good humour
With quiet good humour he remembers the ordinary events as well as the excitements: home life with the weekly drudgery of washday, a childhood spent roaming the Undercliff, and the many shipwrecks off that dangerous coast with strange cargos washed up on the shore and valiant efforts to save the lives of those in peril.
New edition has an extra 40 photographs of Niton
It used to be like this was originally published by the Isle of Wight Teachers’ Centre in 1984 and a copy given to every school on the Island.
It was re-published by Ventnor and District Local History Society in 2018, and this new edition includes more than 40 additional photographs of Niton in the last century (mostly from the Society’s collection).
Buy today
The book was published on 4th April and is available for £8.50 (plus postage) from the Ventnor Heritage Centre or its online shop.
News shared by Dr Jeffrey Mazo, in his own words. Ed
