Talk:History of the Isle of Wight

"The pre-Roman name for the island was possibly Ynys Gywth meaning channel island, a name given by the early celtic speaking inhabitants of the island. These people may have been displaced by Belgic refugees from Jerusalem fleeing the expanding British." wtf? Belgic Refugees from Jerusalem? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.57.122.114 (talk) 18:57, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

There's lots of good stuff in this article. Unfortunately, too much of it is unsourced for the article to be better than Start-class. --Peeky44 (talk) 12:55, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

This article is a mess
I think that this article needs a major cleanup for the following reasons: I am happy to start work on this but I think the work needs some level of planning. I love the Island and would like us to be able to create something of high quality that would do it justice. I'm interested in other's opinions etc. Gaspode the Wonder Dog (talk) 08:52, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
 * The history is disjointed, often speculative and has significant gaps
 * There are sections that either don't belong (Caulkheads, Festival) or should be incorporated into the main text.
 * It needs a good set of informative illustrations, maps and diagrams.

Ethnic Cleansing of Wight
"Some believe they became victims of a policy of ethnic cleansing by the West Saxons in England." what?? who? more information is needed.
 * See links Naturenet | Talk 21:46, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

His source is probably Bedes history http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/bede-book1.html, an account limited to less then a paragraph per anum. However I believe Bedes account says that this ethnic cleansing took place in 648 not the "fifth century" Furthermore using Bede as a source at all is just slapping a bumper sticker over a damaged wall. Bede was a fanatical monk who believed the conquest of vast territories could be determined by magical wizards prophets and divine favor, most of the "English conquest of Briton" was recorded in this manner so this psuedo event should be no more believable then the ethnic cleansing of Kent Bernicia or any other British territory. - Bloody Sacha 5/18/2007

St Bede states that in 686 King Caedwalla of Wessex "destroyed all the people" of the Isle of Wight and gave the land the to his followers. The population was given as 1200 families and the land of 300 families was given to Bishop Wilfrid. In fact the Island was rated as 1200 hides- a hide being the amount of land requred to support a family (generally as much an ox plough team could plough in two days) and 300 hides were given. The Island Jutes under their King Arwald had incurred the wrath of St Wilfrid since they were not only the last pagan kingdom, they had been forcibly converted by King Wulfhere of Mercia and had apostasised back to paganism.This was communicated to Wilfrid by Wulfhere's agent Eoppa the mass priest.
 * Caedwalla had entered into a pact with Wilfrid, shortly after which King Centwine was persuaded to abdicate in his favour and become a monk and then Caedwalla invaded the Isle of Wight and gave Wilfrid a quarter of it.

Later Christian apologists make out that Wilfrid prevailed upon Caedwalla to spare 300 families from death so he could convert them to Christianity. The only source for this is Bede and this is not what he says- even though Bede was obviously a Christian apologist. He goes on to relate (with approval) how the young nephews of Arwald were murdered after having been converted momnets before death (and they are canonised under the name St.Arwald,- King Arwald having died in battle and thus the only saint to have been a pagan martyred by Christians.
 * It is very unlikely that genocide happened all over Britain at the time, involving too many people (about 1.5 million) but the only account for the Isle of Wight says that it did and it is a disingenuous distortion to imply that it did not. Kent was ravaged by Caedwalla and his brother Mul, but clearly Britons did survive as they their weregild is set down in the laws of King Ine, Caedwalla's successor.

- Streona 9 October 2007


 * MORE INFORMATION HAS BEEN PROVIDED AND I REQUEST THAT THIS DISPUTE IS NOW CONSIDERED RESOLVED.
 * The argument of Bloody Sacha is that there is insufficient information. Bede's account is all the information there is but we are talking about 686 a.d. There are also accounts of the relationship between Wilfrid and Caedwalla in the Vita Wilfridi of Eddius Stephanus, which support Bede's account. Sacha is unexpectedly vehement in his condemnation of Bede, I would suggest quite unfairly. It is obvious, especially by his tone, that Bede, if anything would wish to show his co religionists in a good light, rather than commissioning genocide.

The account of the Catholic encyclopaedia over this matter reflects what is said to be local "tradition" that St.Wilfrid prevailed upon the as yet unbaptised St. Caedwalla to spare a quarter of the populace which he baptised at Brading Church (St.Mary's).The evidence does not bear this out, any more than it does more recent Holocaust deniers, nor does Bede's account bear out Barbara Yorke's suggestion that only the Jutish aristocracy were killed. She makes the very sound argument that genocide was not evident in the whole of England, but more of an inter mixing of invaders and natives, but this is an entirely different situation not involving a million and a half people over a wide area but 1200 families" in 147 square miles.Streona 12:22, 17 October 2007 (UTC)


 * The value of what Bede has to say about this territory must be divided by TIME (born multiple centuries later) SPACE (multiple hundred miles away) and CULTURE (was north umbrian) Once we find the mass grave of 1200 families corpses or a contemporary testimonial we can talk about this again. However the fact that genocide didn’t happen, certainly doesn’t prevent “some” people from believing it did and until Wikipedias NPOV covers this convenient weasel word I won’t contest the issue any further.

Hopefully in the future we can uncover meaningful history recorded flatly by contemporary sources such as Zosimus or Jordanes before I see these fallowing adages also from bedes Historia Ecclesiastica used as sources on wikipedia or elsewhere for the existence of Tempests and magical powers.

”XVII. How Germanicus the bishop, sailing into Britain with Lupus, first quelled the tempest of the sea, and afterward that of the Pelagians, by divine power [A.D. 429] XVIII. The same holy man gave sight to the blind daughter of a tribune, and then coming to St. Alban's, there received some of his relics, and left others of the blessed apostles, and other martyrs XIX. How the same holy man, being detained there by an indisposition, by his prayers quenched a fire that had broken out among the houses, and was himself cured of a distemper by a vision [A.D. 429] [ XX. How the same bishops procured the Britons assistance from Heaven in a battle, and then returned home [A.D. 429]“ Bloody Sacha (talk) 11:21, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Where Bede gives us information promoting the Church we may be sceptical, particularly when this includes tall tales of magic. The merciless slaughter in the Isle of Wight is not pro-Christian (although it does not seem that killing pagans was anthing to be ashamed of) and does not entail any unlikely assertions of magic etc. Cawedwalla's tomb exists in Rome, but if 1200 people were massacred their remains are much less likely to survive, since they would not have been properly buried but probably desecrated in some way. Whilst we have not recovered their reamins they obviously existed and are now dead however they met their ends. Zosimus and Jordanes had probably never heard of the IOW so we should not be too upset that they never mention it. Bede is the only account we have and he is a lot more current than the AS Chronicle or Asser and he quite categorically states that Caedwalla killed the Jutes and replaced them with his own followers. Subsequently many Christians have found this unpalatable to believe in but believe the Bible and other religious scriptures on less evidence.--Streona (talk) 14:30, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

I am removing the tag. The only eveidence we have is from Bede and he says the natives were exterminated. Caedwalla later became the patron saint of serial killers, and you don't get a moniker like that without putting some graft into it. --Streona (talk) 14:13, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Beaker people named it?
"The name Wight came from the Beaker people who inhabited the island around 1900 BC and called it "Wiht"[1], meaning island, which the Romans translated as Vectis. "

This is all well and good, but we don't actually know what kind of language the Beaker people spoke, since they didn't write it down. --MacRusgail 18:33, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. The Beaker people comment can have no basis in fact and the reference given does not lead to any reliable primatry source. Modern archaeologists are not even convinced by trhe concept of Beaker people (see Wiki article). I will remove unless strong opposition.Gaspode the Wonder Dog 10:49, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, GtWD. As I understood it, it's most likely that 'Wight' is actually an Old England corruption/derivation of 'Vectis'. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Special:Contributions/ (talk) There are several suggestions for the origin of the name "Wight". My preference is from the Welsh (ie Ancient British) "Inys am Gwyth" meaning "Island of the Channel". The Romans would be unfamiliar with the constructions "Gw-" and "-th" and would have pronounced this "Wect" and adding an inflection to make it a "proper" Latin word came up with "Vectis". The particle "Wyth" or "Wect" gives us "Wight"- especially if you give full value to the "gh".
 * We could recover Beaker words if they had left survivals in the Celtic language. However as the Celts came from the Continent the languages are not related and English has barely any Celtic survivals in its vocabulary, so it is unlikely that we have any knowledge of Beaker words at all and the idea that "Wight" could be one is the purest speculation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Streona (talk • contribs) 12:40, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

The origin is Old British, represented by present-day Welsh 'wyth' - 'eight' in the sense of eight-sided.

Actually more recent research casts doubt on the long believed theory that all of Britain was settled by Celtic speaking people before the romans and later Saxons came. I have put a link in the article. The research is very interesting and partly basedd on DNA analysis of contemporary populations. It isn't accepted, but would certainly explain some of the mysteries I remember writing essays about as a student of the period, including why the celts apparently disappeared whilst leaving behind hardly any place names. Celtic archaeological finds are also very sparse away from the north and west of Britain. IanB2 (talk) 20:17, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Early Modern
This is a term which refers to the 17th century not to Queen Victoria--Streona (talk) 20:05, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Caulkhead etc.
In what respect is this comparable to "cockney" in the East End of London? Haploidavey (talk) 15:35, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Etymology of Vectis
Besides needing a general overhaul using cited authors, the article is unnecessarily vague regarding Wight's Roman name. The standard and authoritative work is Rivet & Smith's "The place-names of Roman Britain". I've a copy at home in London. I'll persuade someone to email me a facsimile of the relevant page. Haploidavey (talk) 16:29, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Weasel alert
Bad weasel! Get down. In the section on Jutish settlement, I take it that "some" refers to Robin Bush, as seen on TV proposing a viewpoint held by (at most) a very small minority? Haploidavey (talk) 15:32, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Isle of Wight disease
This is innacurate, Acarapis woodi has since been shown not to be the cause. I don't have the time right now to fix it, if anyone else wants to before I get to it there's better info here http://coloss.org/publications/Neumann-Carreck-2010-JAR.pdf CJTweedy (talk) 04:04, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Dedicated copy-eding required
I've been picking at the article copy and substance, and have made a few edits. Someone cared enough to create a stub for this article, but it has been expanded with little attention to Wikipedia's basic requirements for evidence. That's a pity. It has potential as an interesting or even a good article, but almost everything in it risks challenge and deletion. Very few citations are offered and of those, some are dead links, some are not encyclopedic and one links to a definition of "overlander". I'd be happy to contribute copy-editing. If anyone has an interest and is prepared to find proper sources, please post. It's on my watchlist. Regards. Haploidavey (talk) 01:07, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Purpose of this section
I have been editing the main Isle of Wight section, which has a reasonable summary of its history.

Looking at this page, I don't see that it adds much more, and am wondering why we need a separate section at all? It wouldn't be that big a deal to copy across some of the unique references from here to the Isle of Wight page - which wouldn't make it too much longer, then delete this page entirely?

Or, alternatively, to create here a more comprehensive survey of the Island's history, and take the relevant material off the main page.

Right now we are trying to do the same job on two separate pages, which doesn't seem right?

On reflection I am having a try at beefing this section up into a worthwhile summary history of the Island.User:IanB2 30 November 2016


 * I've been following progress here, and your beefing up seems well worth it (can find no support as yet for the tagged assertion regarding Viking bases on the island, except in Wikipedia mirrors). But this is recent, and tantalising. Unfortunately, I've no access to Taylor & Francis online (or off). Haploidavey (talk) 12:42, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

The wonder of the Dark Ages is that, without any documents, an archaeologist can find a few bits of pot and make merry in extrapolation without fear of contradiction! Nevertheless the history of the island up to the medieval period was already well covered, and I have managed this morning to pull it into shape and add some citations. The big challenge is that our island history peters out with Henry VIII after which we have just a few random contributions; fleshing this out to any sort of comprehensive history, even in summary, looks like a big job. User:IanB2 30 November 2016

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