3 Alexandra Gardens: Bermuda House

By 1889, when Elgar visited, the first and second floors were separate serviced apartments being let on a short-term basis. Presumably the landlady and family would have occupied the ground floor and basement. The 1891 census return for the house shows Jessie Streeter as a lodgings house keeper with two live in domestics, a “cook, domestic servant” and a “general servant”.

In the late 1890’s Harriet Seabrook and her husband David moved in and continued to run a lodging house on the premises. David had been associated with the corn trade for all of his life and shortly after arriving in Ventnor became maltster at Ventnor Brewery. At this time the house was known as “San Remo”. In 1908 Harriet bought the joint lease to numbers 3 and 4 and continued to live in number 3 – until that time they had a sublease on number 3. When they sold in 1922 they sold separate leases for the two houses.

The advertisement from the 1947 Ventnor holiday guide was one of five advertisements for houses in Alexandra Gardens as somewhere to stay for a holiday, so it was clearly a street pretty much dedicated to holidays at that time.

The guest book running from the 1950’s to the 1970’s is now held at the Ventnor Heritage Museum.

Although the house has now reverted to its original five bedrooms, there were nine in 1979 when Peter and Laurie Parsons bought the house, with the larger rooms divided into two with a wall from the middle of the windows. In these long narrow rooms there were two single beds with their bed heads back to back. At that time each room had a wash basin and there was one guest toilet on the stairs between the ground and first floor, shared between the nine rooms. None of the bedrooms had power sockets in them.