Old Newport, Isle of Wight
Elizabethan Newport clustered around the navigable head of the River Medina. It was a low lying, marshy place the town broken up by three open spaces. From the river, one came first to the Audit House for the transaction of the town’s business, then to St Thomas’s Square with its already old church and market house. Close by, the fish and flesh shambles filled the air with the stench of meat and the street with offal. Finally one reached St James’s Square and the beast market. A woman had been recently burnt here for witchcraft,
By virtue of its location, Newport became the capital of the Isle of Wight. In the 16th century the southern extent of the town was marked by Cosham St, later re-named South Street. Here the poorest people crowded into a jumble of tiny ill served cottages. At that time Newport was part of the parish of Carisbrooke and it was to there that the dead were taken to be buried.
The Outbreak of Plague
With inadequate sanitation, no effective supply of water and the arrival of boats from the mainland in 1582 the worst fears were confirmed when plague reached the Island. Newport lost as many as 200 of its people. Even the Island’s governor, Sir Edward Horsey, succumbed to the scourge.
There was no question of taking the dead to Carisbrooke for burial and a new site was chosen at the archery butts. The ground was consecrated in 1583, becoming known as the Church Litten after the old Saxon word for burial ground. Here the parish of Carisbrooke rubbed shoulders with land belonging to the parish of St Nicholas, the chapel of that name standing within Carisbrooke Castle.
Urban Development
Over the centuries Newport spread to incorporate the cemetery in its midst. The name St Nicholas Villa applied to the house and grounds immediately adjoining Church Litten where once a market garden thrived. Later it housed a school, taking in boarders.
During the 20th century the town thrived. To the east of the Litten lay the premises of Gould, Hibberd and Randall, supplying the Island with lemonade and kixsie cordial. Following bomb damage during World War Two the factory was demolished and, reluctantly, local businesses allowed Marks and Spencer and other supermarkets to gain a toe hold on the Island. On the wall of the M and S building, a fine plaque of the donkey wheel at Carisbrooke, the trademark of the lemonade factory, is incorporated into the wall. The rest of the street is currently occupied by Morrisons supermarket.
To the north- west of Church Litten the Lord Louis library was erected on the corner of Orchard St, superceding the cottages whose gardens once backed onto the cemetery. Due north a car park and a bus station completed the square.
From Graveyard to Pleasure Gardens.
By 1900 Church Litten was full. For the next fifty years it remained, unused, unloved and occupying valuable ground. Large trees grew amid the burial plots then the Borough of Newport took action. The gravestones were dug up to be used as paving slabs, the ground was levelled and a public garden was laid out. Landscaped with bright flower beds, planted with impressive tree species, it became a source of relaxation for the people of Newport. Later a children's playground was added, their running footfalls echoing on the ground below.
Burials in Church Litten
A few tombstones escaped the mass destruction.Those that remain are mostly illegible although a few surviving from the 18th century hint at the people laid to rest. One to survive, whether by design or happy accident, is that to John Hamilton Reynolds. In his youth, Reynolds was a close friend of John Keats, sharing his passion to be a writer. In the event his own career was more mundane but perhaps, remembering the lyrical letters written to him by Keats from the Island, when his daughter died he sought solace on its shores. Here he died in 1852 with the simple legend on his gravestone: A FRIEND OF KEATS.
A single monument erected in 1820 captures the hearts and imagination – to John Valentine Gray, a climbing boy, battered to death by his master, his memorial raised by public subscription. Valentine's name is also immortalised in a walkway near to where he lived his last, miserable months.
Through the ornate Elizabethan gateway into the Litten, mature trees shield the park from the adjacent traffic. Flowerbeds are bright and well maintained. Queen of the trees is a breathtaking weeping beech, while an elderly yew, symbolic of old cemeteries may be left over from earlier times. In the 21st century, children play, happily unaware of the heritage below their feet.
Sources:
A History of the County of Hampshire Volume 5
Parks and Gardens UK
