Ventnor - Other Places of Interest

Other Places of Interest

• Ventnor Park is a small park on the west side of town with a bandstand, aviary and stream, and a putting green open seasonally.
• The Cascade Gardens On the esplanade there is a garden crossed with a waterfall, laid out in 1903, around which winds the main path between the beach and the town. The waterfall is known as The Cascade. Below this is a paddling-pool on the sea front esplanade. In the middle, rising out of the water is a model of the Isle of Wight which children can play on. The hills and inlets are physically modelled and the towns and roads (in red) are painted on. In the past, the Island's remaining railway line has also been shown (in black).
• VENTNOR Sign: There is a sign on the cliffs at La Falaise to the west of the beach which spells out the word VENTNOR in white concrete blocks, about four metres high and intended to provide a landmark visible from the sea. This replaced the chalk letters damaged in 1992. Since about the start of the current millennium, there have also been smaller metal capital letters spelling out the town's name. These are fixed to the seaward side of the water pumping station, itself sympathetically disguised as a bandstand and observation platform, next to the harbour.
• Antique and bric-à-brac stores: There are many of these in the main town shopping area, and these provide a tourist attraction in their own right.
• Ventnor Brewery: A brewery has been in Ventnor on the same location since the 1840s. Water from the local spring, which is called "St Boniface's Well" is used to make the beer. The town was home to Burts Brewery, but it closed in the 1980s. After this, the site was empty for several years. The brewery reopened as a microbrewery in 1996, called the "Ventnor Brewery" which produced a number of cask ales, including Oyster Stout. It closed in 2009.
• RAF Ventnor High above the town exists the former site of RAF Ventnor, once an RAF radar monitoring station. Now used mainly for civilian communications antennae, the site provides views over the English Channel. However the site also contains an extensive bunker complex designed to be part of an early warning network and later converted for use as a shelter in case of a nuclear strike during the Cold War. The bunker, which was a variant on the P1 ROTOR design, has now been sealed and is generally thought to be inaccessible.
• Ventnor is on the Isle of Wight Coastal Path.