Gunville
Gunville is a small settlement on the Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England. It consists largely of housing, although there are also a small number of shops, a couple of charity shops, some retail warehouses, a snooker hall, Methodist Church and a fishing lake. The settlement seems to date from some time after 1800, although the vast majority of the buildings currently standing in Gunville date from after 1900.
The village lies south of Forest Road, joining to the larger settlement of Carisbrooke. It is approximately west of Newport and chiefly lies along a stretch, either side of Gunville Road. It encompasses Alvington Manor View, The Bramleys, Gunville Crescent, Spring Walk, Pineview Drive, Taylor Road, Gunville West, Chapel Close, Broadwood Lane, Park Close, Forest Hills, Arthur Moody Drive, Ash Lane, Ash Close and The Hollows.
In the past, the centre of the Island was made up of a number of small and distinct villages, such as Newport, Carisbrooke, Gunville, Clatterford, Shide, New Village, Barton's Village, Bellecroft, Pan, Hunny-Hill and Fairlee. As time went on, Newport and Carisbrooke have largely engulfed and absorbed all of these villages except for Gunville, although even for Gunville there have had to be concerted efforts to keep the name alive, with many people preferring to refer to it as a part of Carisbrooke. In 2009, the Council actually replaced the Gunville signs with those of Carisbrooke, taking it off the map completely. However, after complaints from local residents, the Gunville signs were returned.
In fact, the Newport conurbation has become so large, that there is no visible break whatsoever between, Newport, Carisbrooke and Gunville, with the only separation being the old historical boundaries. There has been some argument as to where the dividing line between Carisbrooke and Gunville actually lies. In 2009, a new sign was erected showing that Gunville started at the point where Priory Road becomes Gunville Road, at the junction with School Lane. This was the view held in a Newport Parish Council meeting of 2009. But, most people accept that in the past, the starting point of Gunville was the old railway bridge which allowed trains to run under the road, half a mile further to the North. However, this railway bridge and its track have long been demolished, after the railway itself closed in 1953, leaving nothing to visually separate the two villages. But the Gunville sign has now been moved further north to the junction of Alvington Manor View and Gunville Road, virtually the spot where the old bridge used to be.
Name derivation
No records seem to exist of how Gunville derived its name and there are many differing theories. One version is that an owner of Alvington Manor in 1640, married a man from Tarrant Gunville in Dorset and named the area in his honour. Another is that its name comes from Victorian times, when the area was used to store ammunition, and that the name was derived from "Gun Village". However, in an 1884 edition of the Isle of Wight County Press, it is stated that in the early 1800s, a James Lambert owned a house which was close to Forest Road. This house was occupied by officers of the nearby Parkhurst Barracks and that there were two small cannons in the grounds at the front of the house. Because of this, the house became known as 'Gun Villa' and the hamlet which sprang up soon afterwards came to become known as Gunville.There are also theories that the name Gunville derived from a French nobleman by the name of William de Gundeville, who was said to have lived in the area of Carisbrooke in 1292. In 1979, the Medina Borough Council Public Works Committee announced that a new road on the Forest Hills Estate was to be called De Gondeville Avenue in his honour. However, this name only seems to have been used for a couple of months, with the road ultimately called Forest Hills.
Another theory is simply that Gunville is a derivation of Gunfield, as marked on a map from the 1700s and also asserted by William Tucker Stratton, a nineteenth century local historian.
Gunville Lake
The privately owned Gunville Lake is on the west side of Gunville Road and is the oldest fishery owned by the Isle of Wight Freshwater Angling Association. This freshwater section of the Isle of Wight Angling Society was formed in 1956, although they were unable to take full control of the lake's lease until 1969. During all of this time, there was quite a fight to preserve the pond from the constant tipping of rubbish and the spoil from nearby excavations.Gunville Lake covers an area of 4.5 acres, with thirty swims fishable and has been described as one of the finest freshwater fishing spots in the south of England. In 2001, there was a major exercise to clear the lake of unwanted vegetation and to improve land drainage. Gunville Lake is a mixed fishery, popular with carp specialists, with some fish reaching almost 30lb in weight. The lake contains carp, bream, tench, rudd, common roach, perch, pike and eel.
The lake formed part of the old brickworks, which made bricks for the nearby Albany Barracks. In around 1933, part of the brickworks were abandoned when workmen struck an underground stream, causing it to fill with water to a depth of thirty feet in places. It is rumoured that the engine that was used to pull clay to the foundry still lies at the bottom of the lake. In the years leading up to around 1946, the size and depth of the lake reduced drastically, as the site was being used as a rubbish tip by the Newport Corporation. Following the end of the Second World War, a lot of the barbed wire used, also ended up being dumped there. The lake might have been lost forever with the continual tipping, but the council relinquished their tipping rights in 1968. By that time, the lake had shrunk to only around 50 yards across and to only around three feet deep in places. The Council said that although they sympathised with the local anglers, they were giving up their tipping rights with reluctance, as they were unable to find an alternative site.
In its earlier days, the lake used to be referred to as a pond, but after the IWFAA took over the site in 1969 and cleared it to a depth exceeding five feet, it could officially then be classified as a lake. The success in transforming the lake from the old rubbish tip into a beautiful fishery was attributed to the "single-minded zeal of the Association Secretary, Bill Kingswell".
Tragedy struck the lake in 1957, when a 14-year-old schoolboy drowned whilst swimming with a friend. After disappearing in the water, he was later found by a combined police and Fire Brigade search in 18 feet of water, about 9 feet from the bank.
There used to be another fishing pond in Gunville. Although smaller than Gunville Lake, Coker's Pond nevertheless afforded some of the best carp fishing on the island and even attracted fishermen from the mainland to fish there. However, like Gunville Lake, it too suffered from the tipping of rubbish and earth over the years, especially in 1957, when excavations for the new nearby Carisbrooke College was needlessly dumped in the pond. Coker's Pond now no longer exists, after being filled in when a new housing estate was built over the site in 1994. The pond was under the land where Linnet Close and The Finches now lie.
Gunville Stream
Gunville Stream is one of the main tributaries of the River Medina, others include Parkhurst Stream, Pan Stream, Lukely Brook and Merston Stream. Gunville Stream is approximately a mile and a half long. Its source is to the north west of Gunville and it flows under the bridge in the dip of Gunville Road, just to the north of Ash Lane and The Hollows. Continuing on, it flows into Lukely Brook, near the bottom of Hunnyhill road in Newport, which in turn feeds into the River Medina. Little is known about the history of the stream, however there are some concerns for its future, with the ongoing development of the Gunville and Newport land through which it flows.Gunville Trading Estate
This small retail estate on Taylor Road was built in 1970 across the road from Gunville Crescent, over what were originally allotment gardens. The main contractors were Fairholme Estate LTD. There are five retail units and one manufacturing warehouse.Carisbrooke and Gunville Methodist Church
The Carisbrooke & Gunville Methodist Church is arguably the most prominent building in Gunville, which partly dates back to 1848 and is of Gothic design, with red brick and Bath stone dressings. Originally, it was much smaller and was a Bethel Chapel, a Bible Christian denomination of the Methodist church. At that time, there were also two other Methodist churches in Gunville. These were the next-door Beulah Chapel, a Primitive Methodist denomination and the Ashen Grove Methodist Chapel, a Wesleyan denomination, which was further to the south. These last two chapels are no longer in existence, with the current building now also engulfing the site of the Beulah Chapel.In 1907, the building was greatly extended on its north side, at a cost of approximately £2,000, with the new church building opening on 11 July. At the same time as extending the building, a new frontage was added to the old original chapel, which was to now serve as a Sunday School, to make it uniform with the front of the new chapel. The new building was designed by Mr S E Tomkins, architect of Newport and "admirably" built by Messrs T & E W Jenkins, contractors of Newport.
This extension was built because of the growing Gunville population, which made the size of the existing church inadequate. The new church was able to seat 250 to 300 people, with the first stone being laid by Mr Godfrey Baring, who was MP for the Isle of Wight at the time. The apex of the new extension has the name 'Bible Christian Methodist Church' inlaid into it. However, even during its opening ceremony, it was announced that the Bible Christians were joining with several other Methodist denominations, to form a new church called the United Methodist Church. In 1932, following yet more mergers with various other Methodist denominations, another new church was formed, known simply as the Methodist Church.
In 2007, an extension was added to the south of the building to incorporate a new kitchen, toilets and lobby. In 2009, another new lobby was added to the north end of the building. Better parking was also provided, with vehicular access off of Broadwood Lane, instead of Gunville Road.