As the county town of the Isle of Wight, Newport seemed the obvious spot for a vintage mooch when we holidayed there this summer. It drizzled unrelentingly during our visit, which didn’t do much to overturn the slightly neglected vibe it gives off.
We parked at Coppins Bridge – usual fee £3.40 for four hours, but free with our tourists’ island car park permit – and walked through the Cineworld building straight into the town centre.
There are old buildings in abundance in Newport, so plenty of architectural heritage to enjoy. Sadly, though, many are boarded up or covered in scaffolding – including the otherwise impressive Minster Church of St Thomas, originally 12th century but re-built in the 1850s, and the Guildhall, designed by the eminent Georgian architect John Nash, both shown below.
The town does boast this cracker of a ghost sign, though, high up on a building right in the centre. By all accounts, Lennards was a nationwide shoe sellers that was founded in Leicester in the 1870s, merging in 1904 with the Pulic Benefit Boot Company of Leeds and surviving for most of the 20th century as a purveyor of footwear before going out of business in the early 1990s. Definitely a bit of retail history worth stopping to admire.
We lunched at Comicoffee in Pyle Street. The toasties, milkshakes and coffee were good, but in honesty its main appeal is the fact that you can read the Dandy and enjoy the displayed memorabilia while you eat. Very cool.
Whilst using the cafe’s toilet I stuck my nose out of the back exit and found a little courtyard with this plaque on the wall, bearing the rather sad legend of a Victorian chimney sweep called Valentine Gray. Later I couldn’t resist a quick Google to find out more about this tragic little chap.
Newport’s charity shops are plentiful, if a little overpriced for the location. We made it round seven of them but were sadly denied the full as several others were closed, on account of it being a Monday.
Still, if the small-ish haul from Newport itself was a tad disappointing, it was offset by the utter joy of what we found on our way back to our holiday cottage during an impromptu stop-off in the village of Totland, close to the most Westerly point of the island. Here we stumbled on the retail premises of the FYT charity – a volunteer-run community bus service – and an absolute treasure trove, with higgledy-piggledy piles of very cheap vintage clothing, bric-a-brac, and other delights in all of its dusty corners. My thrift-loving daughters and I dug deep, and came away well rewarded.
Fave finds of today included a lush pair of coral Y2k mules from Bloomingdales (snapped up pretty quickly after I listed them on the Depop shop), and this little Midwinter soup bowl, which was covered in dust and stuffed in a window. The ceramic output of Midwinter featured some truly stunning designs in the sixties and seventies – and this one boasts the Country Garden pattern, created by the renowned ceramic artist Jessie Tait.
The paperback book is ‘Lottie and Lisa’, by the German writer Erich Kastner – better known for Emil and the Detectives – and a story that I couldn’t put down as a book-loving child. I bought it today for its sheer nostalgia value – but I would love to eventually replace all the long discarded books that I loved in childhood. Maybe one day I can read them to my grandchildren.
WHERE TO WEE IN NEWPORT Public toilets, South Street. Bit grim.Cineworld, Coppins Bridge. Handy if you’ve parked there, as we did.Public toilets, Post Office Lane. At a cost of 40p. |
The Vintage Mooch 
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