43-45 High Street, Sandown, IOW - Villakin - TE Porters

This magnificent building is a recent watercolour commission. It shows the shop T.E.Porters as it looked around 1900, numbers 43 and 45 High Street, Sandown, IOW.

This building stands on the site of a cottage once known as Sandham Cottage. The cottage was one of the first domestic buildings in Sandown and became the holiday home of the radical and rebellious politician and Mayor of London, John Wilkes, from around 1788. Wilkes loved the house with its sweeping views over Sandown Bay and called it his ‘Villakin’. He resided there until his death in December 1797, having made many alterations and gained much livestock including bantams, peacocks, Chinese pigs and guinea-foul. A blue plaque now marks the spot of his house, ’Site of ‘Vilakin’ occupied (1788-1798) by John Wilkes, M.P., Lord Mayor of London. 1774-75’’.

In 1841, Wilke’s Villa was offered for sale by Pittis auctioneers. The house had recently undergone a thorough repair, and the estate was divided into 4 lots: a cottage, the Villa, a kitchen garden and a building site with immediate frontage to the beach, suitable for a Marine Villa. At some point before the 1889, Wilke’s Villa, which stood which stood on the corner of Wilkes’s Road and the High Street was pulled down ‘to make way for modern improvements’. With the establishment of a railway between the main port of Ryde through to Sandown, Sandown became a popular seaside resort with a great many buildings erected throughout the Victorian era, which meant building plots were sought after.

The illustration shows the shop TE Porters at 43 High Street, and the sign on the shop is hard to read but mentions ‘Artists Repository, Carver, Gilder and Picture Frame Maker’, ‘Oil Paintings cleaned and restored. Engravings …. Gifts … photographic …. Picture frames’. They also sold fancy goods, toys, cards and games and stationery and had another shop in Shanklin.

Next door at number 45 you can just see Porter’s tobacconists shop which was the sole agent for Loewe and Co’s celebrated silver mounted briar pipes, agents for Oakes Bros and Cos cigars and cheroots, Muratti’s Cigarettes and was the largest stockist of pipes, walking sticks on the Island.

The two buildings were definitely in existence and occupied by Porter by 1889.

Thomas Edward Porter was born in 1843, and lived at Pyle Street, Newport. His father Thomas How was a cabinet maker and postman and Thomas Edward became an apprentice picture framer maker and guilder. In 1868 there was mention of T Porter, Carver & guilder at Wilkes’ Road, although in 1871, Thomas Edward lived at nearby Mellville Street. A year later, in 1872, he married Sabina Woods, the daughter of a farmer from Calbourne.

In 1881, Thomas, Sabina and son Edward (1879) lived at ‘Wilkes Hall’ which seems to have been on the corner of Wilkes Street and the High Street, Sandown. Thomas was a guilder employing one man, a boy and a woman, and living at the same address was also an assistant, servant and nurse. Porter was one of the Founders of Sandown Masonic Lodge established in 1880 and in 1881 the Lodge moved to ‘Bro Porter’s Rooms - known as Wilks Hall’, however by 1892, Bro Porter needed the rooms for family purposes and the Lodge moved to new premises on the High Street.

By 1891, their listed address was 43 & 45 High Street, and by then they had three children, Edward Thomas, Howard Howe and Dorothy Eva. Thomas was also running a tobacconist with the picture framing business, and also living at the address were 2 fancy repository assistants, a nurse and a general domestic servant. By 1901, son Douglas Richard had been born, and the family continued to live there until at least 1911, by which time eldest son Edward had moved elsewhere.

Thomas Edward died in 1923 aged 80 years, and Sabina also at age 80 in 1932, both whilst living at Bedwyn Lodge, Leed Street, Sandown.

Son eldest son Edward Thomas continued to work as a tobacconist and lived at Chandos, Carter Street, Sandown around 1911, with wife Winifred Alice and daughter Winifred Joan. By 1939 Edward and Winifred had moved to Rose Court, Station Avenue, Sandown where he managed the recently demolished Rivoli Cinema, daughter Winifred assisted as the cashier, and younger daughter Margaret Mary (by then married to George A Ward) also lived there. Edward Thomas died a year later aged 62. Wife Winifred Alice died in 1952.

By 1939 son Harold Howe was living at 4 Lead Street with a housekeeper. His profession was listed as tobacconist dealer.

Meanwhile in 1939 number 43 High Street was listed as vacant and number 45 continued to be a tobacconists, then run by Frank Ni Nicholls and Kate A Howard. Frank Nicholls was the son of a London photographer who had moved to Sandown, married on the Island and set up a photography business in the High Street by the 1880s. In the 1890s the family moved to Shanklin, but son Frank appears to have moved back to Sandown and ran the tobacconists at number 45.

Numbers 43 and 45 High Street have been occupied by Ladies Realm ladieswear fashion since the 1960s. You can read more about their history and see photos of how the building looks now, on their website.

Please read more about the history of Sandown shops with more shop illustrations on our page Sandown History.