Ryde Architecture

The Prince of Wales Pub 1969
(High Street, Ryde)

There was trouble brewing at the old Isle of Wight pub in Ryde High Street.  One of England’s oldest licensees, 85 years-old Mrs Elizabeth Pine, was preparing for battle to save her home, The Prince of Wales.

The brewers, Messrs. W. B. Langton Ltd., though sympathetic, were selling the rambling old building, once the haunt of smugglers, to a national chain store. Demolition was to follow, then a supermarket would be built on the site.

Six months-notice to leave was up in the September 1969, but there was one snag; Mrs. Pine and her 53-year-old bachelor son Bill, who managed the place for her, were staying put. “They can knock it down around us but we are not shifting”, said Mrs. Pine—and she had plenty of support.  More than 800 people, including all the regulars’ and many of the town’s leading figures, among them the Mayor, Wilfred Caple, had signed a petition for the pub’s preservation.  Ald. Mark Woodnutt, the Island’s M.P., had also pledged support. On Thursday he accepted the petition with a promise to hand it to Colonel W. Whitbread, chairman of the brewery combine of which Mew Langton’s was a subsidiary.

Widow of a Customs and Excise officer who died in 1939, Mrs Pine was London-born and had been in the brewery trade over 60 years.  Her saloon bar was decorated with dozens of Scout moot pennants from many parts of the world, souvenirs of her lifelong association with the movement (during the first world war she received a gold brooch from Lord Baden Powell for her Scout work in the London area).

Although Mew Langton’s had offered the Pines other accommodation in the town, Bill said “It’s not just the other places mentioned just weren’t suitable in themselves, they were both concerned that the borough should lose one of its oldest public houses.  There was a lot of feeling in the town about it.”

Exactly how old the premises were, no-one seemed to know, but it was in existence when Ryde was a small fishing village.  The proudest possession was a copper ash tray made by the Duke of Windsor when, as Prince of Wales, he served as a cadet at the former Osborne naval college.

Those that had worked on the petition, spoke about the secret tunnel, it was also understood that behind the brickwork was an older timber building, and they remarked “Was it a listed building?—If not, it should be.”

Source: Details from a feature in the IW Times Aug 1969
Image: Tony Gale Collection
Article: Ann Barrett