My first memories of Colwell Bay

Margaret Bebbington

I first went down to Colwell on my honeymoon and we stayed at the Colwell Bay Inn in 1946. The inn was very different to how it is today. All the beer was stored in large barrels in a stillage at the back of the bar and the beer was collected from the barrels in large jugs and brought to the counter. There were no electrical pumps in those days and the locals used a very small room on the left hand side which was paritioned off as their ‘special’ place. My husband's uncle, Frank Nutty, was the licencee and had carried on the business from his father George Nutty (As you can see from the photograph standing at the steps of the Inn) Gossip says that at one time that it (the inn) was involved with smuggling but then this is said about every Inn, on the West Wight.

In 1946 there was a great food shortage and rationing was the order of the day else where but when I walked into the Kitchen of the Colwell Bay Inn I was astounded to see hanging from the beams a row of hooks on which rested pheasant, rabbits, hams, and all sorts of poultry. A great big scrubbed kitchen table ran the length of the kitchen and at meal times there was no signs of rationing, as the biggest slab of butter appeared at every meal. To get from the Colwell Bay Inn to the shore one had to walk down Colwell Chine across the main road and skirting the common which in those days was covered with bushes and shrubs and small trees of all sorts of descriptions not the mown flat lawn like it is today. On the right hand side just as you approach Colwell Chine there was great bangs of bamboo hedge behind which was Rockstone cottage reputed to be the officers’ mess of forces involved in the French wars. The men so rumour says were camped on the common under canvas. Today, Rockstone is now a hotel and all the frontage is open, in the old days this was all covered by foliage. Carrying on down the chine it was almost impossible to go down easily because there was rolls and rolls of barbed wire obstructing the way. On reaching the shore the barbed wire continued along the front which had a derilicted appearance, wooden beach huts, sheds that housed pleasure boats were battered and unpainted because during the war all leisure activities had been discouraged.

Walking from Colwell to Totland, was a hazard because of cliff falls that had not been attended to and there was a gun site half way along manned by the armed forces. All place names on signs posts and buildings had been obliterated. One day we went to Alum Bay and there was a sea mine bombing up and down in Alum Bay this object was later detonated by the forces. It is said by the locals that before D Day it would have been impossible to stand another soldier on the Isle of Wight it was so crowded that they were shoulder to shoulder. Despite all this the scenary on the lovely Isle of Wight bloomed and continued and the crickets still sang but war went on.

At the bottom of Colwell Chine there are still two concrete blocks which formed the base of a primitive railway where goods were brought in from the crafts that supplied equipment etc for the troops. My father in law was a regular solider and he was stationed at the Needles Battery during the 1914-18 war having served in Ceylon (which is now Sri Lanka) He met my mother in law who was Ella Nutty and lived at the Colwell Bay Inn. They married and had to live in army accommodation with the Maby family adjacent to the Inn. Father in Law was termed an Army School Master in the Gunnery department and when my Mother In Law was alive the National Trust asked me if it would be possible for mother to remember what sort of lamps they had for lighting in the Needles Battery but unfortunately Mother in Law was over 100 and was unable to supply any detailed information.