It's Sunday morning (this was 4 days ago, it's now Wednesday. Addendum it's 5:30am and I'm sitting on the couch when a mountain hare hops up to the floor to ceiling glass window to say hello. I'd seen one yesterday, but he/she just hopped across the lawn without stopping to say hello. This one came right up to the window not two metres away from me and stared at me for some time.) Back to Sunday … we all decided to go for a walk down the lane we had driven in on last night. If a car comes, we might have to hop on the bonnet as its only wide enough for a car. Why walk the lane? To see the miniature horses. What we hadn't expected was to meet our hosts on our way back.

We've hardly had any contact with any of our Airbnb hosts on this trip. Jonathan had welcomed us last night. He'd been concerned that he hadn't been able to provide appropriate sleeping arrangements. The second bedroom has to be accessed through our bedroom, it only has single beds and there is no upstairs bathroom. All manageable.

This morning however, Jonathan and wife and 12 year old daughter are returning from an early morning "wild swim". Apparently, there is a freshwater pond somewhere in the woods behind the Manor House. The daughter had run off with Jonathan's clothes and when she realized we were coming down the track, she ran them back to him and they vanished into the woods to get dressed. That left his wife to greet us with "Hello, are you staying with us?"

Of course, conversation ensued. She and Ches began chatting about everything and anything; Brexit, daughter going off to boarding school, her experience as an 18 year old traveling to Sydney and briefly working at Ascham, etc etc. Jonathan and Drew teased from each other that while Drew was a composer (Jonathan had thought musician), and he was a film producer. Ches had immediately recognised Jonathan's wife, however she gave no indication that she had, and so the conversation was very natural. It's one of the great things about Ches, she connects with people as people. By that I mean, she doesn't identify people with their work or associations. Here was a woman who we only know through the roles she plays on screen and Ches connected on a personal level with a delightful young woman and her daughter.

The family were returning to London later in the day, and Jonathan said we were welcome to help ourselves to fruit from the orchard and wild Raspberries. He brought Ches a red rose from their garden.

They only purchased Gotten Manor recently and will relocate more permanently in the next year or so. The Manor has a great history. Jonathan and google collectively provided the following history: The site was first settled by the Jutes, a Nordic tribe who settled parts of the British Isles following the Roman withdrawal of Britain circa 388 AD. By the time of the Domesday Book, it had come under the ownership of the Bruning Brothers. The Manor was then passed onto 'William, son of Stur' during Norman rule and at the time comprised roughly 120 acres.

There is little further mention of the Manor until 1305, when it was written about in local records: "the tenement being extended as a Hall, a Grange, an Oxstall, with half an acre of Garden, a Dovecot, 30 acres of Arable, 20 acres of Pasture and one Free Tenant rendering 12 pence per annum".

In 1313 the custodian of Gotten Manor, Walter de Goditon, became embroiled in an infamous shipwreck at Chale; a ship carrying 174 casks of white wine from Aquitaine to England washed against the rocks and the cargo was looted from the beach by locals. A contemporary investigation found the ringleader to be none other than Walter de Goditon. A long trial ensued, culminating in Walter being summoned to Westminster, where he was found guilty. The size of the fine received forced the selling and donation of much of his land, an acre of which was donated to the Church and led to the building of St Catherine's Oratory lighthouse, a significant landmark on the south coast of the Isle of Wight which protected ships for centuries and remains standing to this day.

St. Catherine's Oratory is a medieval lighthouse on St. Catherine's Down, above the southern coast of the Isle of Wight. It was built by Lord of Chale Walter de Godeton (sometimes spelled "Goditon") as an act of penance for plundering wine from the wreck of St. Marie of Bayonne in Chale Bay on 20 April 1313. The tower is known locally as the "Pepperpot" because of its likeness.

It is Britain's only surviving medieval lighthouse, and the second oldest (only the Roman lighthouse at Dover being older). It is a stone structure four stories high, octagonal on the outside and four-sided on the inside, originally attached to the west side of a building; remnants of three other walls are visible.

de Godeton was tried for theft in Southampton, before a jury from the island, and fined 287 and half marks on 27 February 1314. However, he was also later tried by the Church courts, since the wine had been destined for the monastery of Livers in Picardy. The Church threatened to excommunicate him unless he built a lighthouse near Chale Bay.

There was already an oratory on the top of the hill, dedicated to St. Catherine of Alexandria. This was augmented by the construction of the lighthouse, with a chantry to accommodate the priest who tended the light, and also gave Mass for those at peril on the sea.

Although de Godeton died in 1327, the lighthouse was nevertheless completed in 1328. It remained in active use until the Dissolution of the Monasteries between 1538 and 1541.

In the 18th century Sir Richard Worsley of Appuldurcombe House bolstered the structure by adding four large buttresses to prevent its collapse.

The 'Salt Cellar' or 'Salt Pot' (stone structure), now lying within the compound of a modern wireless station.

Nearby there are the footings of a replacement lighthouse begun in 1785, but never completed, because the hill is prone to dense fog. Its remnants are known locally as the "salt cellar". A nearby Bronze Age barrow was excavated in 1925.

The current St. Catherine's Lighthouse, constructed after the 1837 wreck of the Clarendon, was built much closer to sea level on St. Catherine's Point.
The farm remained 'in hand' until the late 1930s, at which point it was leased and the current plot that makes up Gotten Manor today came into being.

We've loved staying in one of the apartments in the old "cart house". We have floor to ceiling glass across the entire front of the apartment and look out on lawn and the Pig Barn (no pigs) as well as the back entrance to the Manor house.

Our morning walk and breakfast attended to, we had decided to visit Ventnor and Shanklin for afternoon tea. All the top rated restaurants were fully booked for dinner last night and again today, so we hit on a teahouse in Shanklin which is highly reviewed. As for dinner last night. We had to rely upon fish and chips. But where? By the time we realised that it was the only option, we also discovered that almost all close at 7:00pm

Keith and I headed up to a village just 2 miles away, using the Post Code provided. No F&C existed. We rang them and found they were in a different village but as we hadn't ordered, no go. As I drove toward Ventnor 29 minutes away, Keith phoned to place an order. We arrived to a thriving and busy shop. Mum and Dad doing the cooking and one young lady putting the orders together. She had on full makeup including false eyelashes and quite a sheen as she powered through her work. Either she is fully committed to customer service (which truly was excellent), or she just wanted to get finished to go out on the town. Lord knows where in an isolated town like this.

The 20-minute return didn't do much for the chips, however the fish was large and so well battered that it remained crisp till the last bite. Ches had planned on stripping the batter off hers, but one taste and she relented. The equivalent of $22:00 per serve but the best value for money meal in a long time.

Where were we? That's right, driving through pretty little villages to Ventnor. Passed our F&C shop from last night and then took the steepest hairpin road down the cliff face. There was a traffic jam that turned out to be a lady who had fallen off her motor bike. I suspect negotiating the tight bends and cars doing the usual stop to allow others to pass had resulted in her just toppling sideways. Both she and the bike appeared OK.

On down the hill to the long-term carpark and a walk down the last 50m to the beach. Ches had such sore hips, she was limited to sitting on bench seats built into the front wall of a house, looking out on the channel. Walking on the gravel beach at Alum cove yesterday had rendered both her right and left hips very sore. She was terrified that she had re-damaged her right hip, but another day later and its recovered.

Drew and Keith strode off and walked the promenade and then up into the village above. I just walked the promenade and breakwater. It's an interesting village/town and Ches and I did visit the upper parts of the village several days later, so I'll wait till then to fill you in.

Our sole mission today had been to find a teashop that could redeem all the others.

My family intensely dislike my habit of digressing when telling a story. I love going down rabbit holes. Prepare yourself for several rabbit holes and a hares "nest" . Did you know that while most rabbits live underground in burrows or warrens, hares live in simple nests above the ground, and usually do not live in groups. Hares do not bear their young below ground in a burrow as do other leporids, but rather in a shallow depression or flattened nest of grass called a form.

First for a digression into a hare's nest: When I wrote about our time in Brighton and the white cliffs of Beachy Head, I forgot to mention that at the same time I was reading Peter James's "Left You Dead". Spoiler alert: a week later I read the final chapters which concluded with two of the protagonists being pushed off the cliffs right where I had taken the photographs of the lighthouse. I'm glad I read it after the event.

Now for the rabbit hole: In the mid-1800s, Gotten Manor was passed from a landowner and merchant in Imperial Russia to a descendant of his, Lieutenant W H Dawes, who fought in the Crimea. He was a nephew of the notorious Sophie Dawes later Baroness of Foucheres. Could Lieutenant Dawes have been related to William Dawes who recorded indigenous language and was the astronomer at Sydney Cove in 1788-90? Dawes Point.

Several side burrows later, I determined that our Dawes' son was also an astronomer and had no children. Lieutentant W H Dawes however had a cousin, Sophie Dawes. I'll post the usual lengthy summary of her life at the end of the blog. Boy, have I met some fascinating people on this trip. Seriously, but for coincidences like this, I'd never have heard of such interesting people.

The burrow took a sharp turn to the south east; Shanklin actually. That tea shop that was going to have to work miracles.? It's in Shanklin.

I had phoned "Old Thatch Teashop" that morning to make a booking. The owner Pat had responded by asking if we could make it there in time from Australia. Funny lady.

It was located in the heart of the town and surrounded by other thatched roof cottages. Picture Perfect. It's Grade 11 listed, a combination of three fisherman's cottages and the oldest building in the town (1690). Pink walls with thatch.

She'd saved us a table in the courtyard. It was another very windy day, however the courtyard was sheltered and sunny. We were visited by birds and fairies. The birds came and went, the fairies occupied the back and side fences … in their hundreds. At least they were better than garden gnomes.

Pat and Charles offer a great variety of "Cream Teas". We could have had crumpets or English muffins of buttered Teacake or sandwiches or any number of combinations, but we settled for Apple and Ginger Scones, cream and Rhubarb and Ginger jam. And tea.

Let's just say we enjoyed the food and the ambiance enough to overstay our welcome. In at 3:00 and not out till after 4:30.

Back at the manor, Drew, Keith and I decided we'd walk the track up to the Hoy monument. It's a tall pillar surmounted by an orb, on a square plinth. The pillar was previously known as the Alexandrian Column and erected in 1814 by Michael Hoy to commemorate a visit by His Imperial Majesty Alexander the First, Emperor of all the Russias to Great Britain. With a commemorative tablet. A new tablet was fixed on the opposite side, of the same size and appearance, to commemorate the Crimean War.

The two tablet's Inscription:

(TABLET 1) IN COMMEMORATION OF THE VISIT/ OF/ HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY/ ALEXANDER THE 1ST/ EMPEROR OF ALL THE RUSSIAS/ TO GREAT BRITAIN IN THE YEAR 1814/ IN REMEMBRANCE OF MANY HAPPY YEARS/ RESIDENCE IN HIS DOMINIONS/ THIS PILLAR/ WAS ERECTED BY/ MICHAEL HOY/ (TABLET 2) THIS TABLET WAS ERECTED BY/ WILLIAM HENRY DAWES/ LATE LIEUTENANT OF H.M. 22 REG./ IN HONOR OF THOSE BRAVE MEN OF/ THE ALLIED ARMIES/ WHO FELL ON THE ALMA/ AT INKERMANN/ AND AT THE SIEGE OF SEVASTOPOL/ A.D. 1857

Here's the thing. Drew has been saying that my breathlessness and wheezing is probably covid. I maintain it's a result of hay fever. I'm into my fourth bottle of cough syrup and regularly spraying with Beconase. I had to stop every hundred metres or so, and they surged ahead (at my insistence). My wheezing just became worse and worse. On occasions I could see the top of the monument, however I reached the stage of having to give up. By all accounts, I needed only go another 400 metres and I would have reached the top.

I had the same problem as Osborne House the following day when trying to walk down to the beach and across to the children's Swiss House …. and back. I'm almost certain it's just a hay fever. Bloody awful symptoms. When retuning the car in Southampton the lady there told us that her son who lives in Brighton had gone to the doctor and been told that there was a pollen in the air that hadn't been recorded for around 80 years. Who knows. At least today (back in Southampton because it's now Thursday), I'm not suffering so much.

So, that was the Sunday on the Isle of Weight.

SOPHIE DAWES (c.1792-1840) HER HISTORY

A brief biography for the Sophie Dawes Trail by author Robert Stephen Parry

A Bad Press; When we say someone has been given a 'bad press' it usually suggests the person in question has been careless with their reputation, or else someone has been making mischief at their expense - often to exonerate themselves from certain shortcomings or misdemeanours of their own. It's a common-enough occurrence. But possibly nowhere in history has the term 'bad press' been so apt as in the case of that most noteworthy daughter of St Helens, Sophie Dawes.

Hardly a single written summary of her life is able to resist the term 'adventuress' or, far worse, 'murderess' by way of introduction. Even her most diligent biographer, Marjorie Bowen, (for which we have to go back to the year 1934) seems to have despised her. And the real character and motivation of the individual herself remains a mystery.

One thing is for certain, though: at the age of around 15 years when Sophie Dawes left the Isle of Wight it was as a lonely, impoverished and parochial young person of little distinction or prospect. When, in 1831, she returned to bury her nephew James and commission a memorial to him in the church yard of St Helens, it was as one of the richest, most influential and cosmopolitan of women in all of Europe. How that remarkable transformation came about in such a short space of time is quite a story.

This is what happened ... Sophie Dawes was born around 1792 in St Helens, then a poor fishing community on the Isle of Wight. It was not an easy existence. A good few of her siblings perished before reaching adulthood, and she might well have had an abusive father. She spent time in a workhouse before leaving to become a skivvy on a local farm, and then a chambermaid in the city of Portsmouth before journeying to London where she became a milliner's assistant. She also worked for a while in the theatre and became the illicit lover of a married man. When the affair concluded, Sophie was left with a considerable allowance, much of which she spent on educating herself.

She then went to work (in what capacity is not exactly clear) in a high-class establishment serving the needs of wealthy gentlemen - among whom were several of the noble émigrés from France escaping the Revolution. It was here she met Louis Henri, duc de Condé, a senior member of the Bourbon Royal line and one of the richest men in Europe. They became lovers. Sophie and her mother were installed in an expensive part of the capital where Sophie insisted on an even better regime of education than she had so far arranged for herself. Classical and modern languages, the arts and etiquette featured heavily until, Pygmalion-like, she became quite a cultivated young woman.

This all stood her in good stead when, with the fall of Napoleon, the émigrés, including the Duc de Condé, returned to France and began to re-establish their estates. The Duc's lands and chateau were at Chantilly and St Leu among numerous other places, and eventually Sophie joined him. As the Duc's estranged wife was still alive, and they were of the Catholic faith, it was impractical to consider divorce, so Sophie was passed off in society as the natural child of the Duc (of which he already had set the precedent of having at least one, in any case).

To ensure Sophie and her benefactor lived in close proximity, however, they hatched a plan by which the young woman would marry someone who could be elevated as a personal aide-de-camp to the Duc. This was achieved when Sophie became wed to Adrien Victor de Feuchères, a young officer in the Royal Guards. Both Sophie and her new husband were elevated to the nobility, with Sophie being known thereafter as Sophia Baronne de Feuchères. She was received favourably at the court of Louis XVIII and became a glittering Parisian socialite.

But eventually the marriage began to fail and when the duc's duplicity came to light, Baron Feuchères was understandably rather upset and created a scene. Sophie was banished from society for a while but was eventually reinstated by her wealthy benefactor, who had by this time become a Prince due to the passing of his father. Sophie was received once more at court, therefore, while at Chantilly she began to import members of her own family to become staff. Her mother had always accompanied her, but now there was her nephew James and others. James became a great favourite with the prince, being in charge of the hunt. He, too, was made a baron.

Perhaps not altogether kindly, for by now she had made quite a few enemies, Sophie became known as the 'Queen of Chantilly.'

Over the subsequent years, as the Prince de Condé aged and became more and more interested in the pursuits of hunting and playing cards, Sophie began to meddle in the turbulent and dangerous world of French politics. She became closely allied to those who would eventually come to power in what became the July Revolution of 1830. The most influential of these was the infamous nobleman Charles Maurice de Talleyrand. Sophie and he cemented an alliance by arranging for her niece to marry Talleyrand's nephew.

She then turned her sights even higher by cultivating a friendship with the family of one of the Prince's noble relatives, the future King of the French, as he would style himself, Louis Philippe d'Orléans, who was to come to power in 1830.

To this end, she persuaded her prince, who was without legitimate issue (his only son having been murdered by Napoleon in 1804) to bequeath the greater portion of his vast wealth and estates not to her alone but to one of Louis Philippe's sons, the duke d'Aumale. As for the prince himself, and though he did ultimately acquiesce, he had never entirely approved of the transaction. By 1830 he was quite elderly and frail, and was rumoured to be considering fleeing to England and possibly changing his will. Louis Philippe and his family were, as might be expected, more than a little alarmed at this prospect.

It was shortly after this when the prince was found dead one morning in his chamber, a makeshift noose of handkerchiefs around his neck which was attached to the fastenings of a window. Though a suspect in the prince's murder, Sophie was cleared of any wrongdoing eventually, and a verdict of suicide was reached.

It was a great scandal in France, and popular sentiment was very much against Sophie even then - just as it was to turn against Louis Philippe eventually. For his part, the king no longer needed Sophie, anyway. He had what he wanted, and gradually royal favour evaporated. Sophie's nephew James also died around this time, and Sophie had his body returned to St Helens. So quite a reversal of fortunes for the Baronne de Feuchères.

Detail from one of the few portraits of Sophie to have survived - this one by Emile Doumet showing her in poignant mood following the demise of the Prince de Condé

Eventually, at the dawn of the Victorian age, Sophie came back to her country of birth. She made sure her family were well provided for; she bought property in London and in Dorset and installed her elderly mother in a convent. Thereafter, she gave away much of her vast wealth to charitable causes, and in 1840 she died suddenly from a heart condition.

Conclusion

As you can see, much of Sophie's story takes place at a considerable distance from St Helens - far away in the elegant terraces of Regency London, or the grand palaces of post-Napoleonic France. So when we take the Sophie Dawes Trail today we can really only acquaint ourselves with the beginnings of that extraordinary life - walking in the footsteps of an uncommonly energetic, intelligent and determined young spirit at the beginning of what was to become one of the most amazing and scandalous rags-to-riches stories ever.

On a practical level, there is plenty of fresh sea air to be had, and some remarkable landscapes and historical features such as the Duver and the millpond to marvel at along the way. But in our thoughts there might also be a degree of Gothic intrigue and even a possible conspiracy theory or two to ponder, if we like that sort of thing. Sophie really did have a bad press. She still does. And as one who has had the pleasure of visiting the area quite often, I believe the trail as presented here is certainly worthy of a good few hours of exploration.

© Robert Stephen Parry, 2020