Gunville

Gunville
Hampshire
Location
Island:	Isle of Wight
Grid reference:	SZ480889
Location:	50°41’54"N, 1°19’17"W
Data
Post town:	Newport
Postcode:	PO30
Dialling code:	01983
Local Government
Council:	Isle of Wight
Parliamentary constituency:	Isle of Wight

Gunville is a village on the Isle of Wight, Hampshire's great south island, which has become a north-western attached suburb of the island's main town, Newport. Gunville is largely residential but with a small number of shops, a couple of charity shops, some retail warehouses, a snooker hall, Methodist Church and a fishing lake.

Gunville may first have appeared at some time after 1800, although the vast majority of the buildings currently standing there now date from after 1900.

The village lies south of Forest Road (the A3054), joining to the larger settlement of Carisbrooke and just over a mile west of Newport itself.

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. Gunville people have made concerted efforts to keep its name alive, in the face of frequent reference to it as merely a part of Carisbrooke (and indeed in 2009, the Council actually replaced the Gunville signs with those for Carisbrooke, which was reversed after complaints.

There is no visible break whatsoever between, Newport, Carisbrooke and Gunville, with the only separation being the old historical boundaries.

Name

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 (renamed Albany Barracks shortly after completion) 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

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 four and half acres, with thirty swims fishable and has been described as one of the finest freshwater fishing spots in the southern counties. 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 (now demolished), 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. After 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 Isle of Wight Freshwater Angling Association 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".

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.

Gunville Stream

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.

Outside links

• Isle of Wight County Press archives

References

• The Isle of Wight County Press dated 27 December 1884.
• Bardon Vectis – An outline of the history of quarrying and brick making on the Isle of Wight until 1939.
• John Dennett, Isle of Wight Rocket Man
• Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, Volume the Nineteenth, 1906.
• Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight, George Brannon, 1843