Cynthia
When Thomas Sherwood took over the residency of Point House he moved in with his wife Elizabeth, whom he had married in 1922 at the age of 34, and his daughter Cynthia, then aged 12 years. Thomas had been born in 1888 at Bramley outside Leeds to a family with no connection to the sea whatsoever, and yet at the age of 17 years, much to the surprise of his parents he joined the Navy as a boy sailor.
Thomas stayed in the Navy for nearly 23 years, rising from Ordinary Seaman to Petty Officer and completing his service in 1928. He took a number of temporary jobs including one with Southern Railways who eventually appointed him to their permanent staff early in 1933. During the next couple of years he worked under the Marine Superintendent Alfred Langworthy who must have realised that Thomas was a hard working, trustworthy and sober man who was loyal to the company. When Langworthy moved out of Point House to prepare for retirement he recommended that Thomas Sherwood be offered the the post of Caretaker and the residency of Point House.
The role of Caretaker encompassed a myriad of duties, the principle one being to meet the ferries as they approached the slipway and ensure they were secured. During the winter months there were only three return trips a day but in the high season Cynthia recalls that he seemed to be permanently on duty. Living so close to the job, Thomas would be called out at all times of day or night for any emergencies be they related to urgent repairs to the boats or to rescue motorists who had overshot the slipway and ended up in the water.
Thomas, Elizabeth and Cynthia stayed at Point House until 1951, with a short break for the war, when a new Marine Manager decided that he would like to make use of the house at Point. The family moved out to a house in Laburnum Grove but Thomas died there of a stroke barely a year afterwards on 14th April 1952. Elizabeth survived him by over 20 years, dying in December 1973. Cynthia continued to live there until 2007.
Cynthia Remembers the House
"I always felt that the house must have had a long and historic past....the store was full of records....everything was destroyed when the house was demolished.
On entering the double front doors there were two steps which raised the hall well above the level of the street. This was necessary to avoid the flooding at high tides. The grooves on the outside of the door were for boards which were slotted in when (very) high tides were imminent. On the right of the hall was the Booking Office for the Isle of Wight Car Ferries, and on the other side was a waiting room for the use of passengers (this was later to become another office).
At the end of the hall a door led into the old part of the house, and it was here that the enormous thickness of the walls could be seen. The first of the four old vaults had been made into a kitchen; it had a semicircular ceiling and ran the full width of the building and was divided into two rooms by a large wooden dresser. Although it was large it was always warm and cosy, being heated by a handsome range which supplied hot water and was used for cooking....During the winter it was the warmest place in the house, so this is where we listened to the radio and I did my homework.
A door to the side of the dresser led into the inside storeroom which, like several rooms in the house, was without windows. During WW2 this room had become the local air-raid shelter; I suppose the thick walls were the deciding factor, and the ceiling had extra support with strong wooden posts for added safety. When the sirens sounded the front doors were opened and in came the neighbours, including any guests staying at the 'Union'....although bombs fell into the sea.... the house stood still, though the upper floors developed an even greater slope.
From the hall a flight of lino covered stairs led up to a gate marked "PRIVATE" (although we soon discovered that passengers sometimes ignored this and were found wandering about upstairs). Here the stairs divided with a flight going to the front of the house and a slightly lower one to the back. At the top of the former was a roomy landing and to the right, at the corner of the building, was the sitting room. It was about 18' square with a window on each of the two outer walls giving magnificent views of the harbour entrance, HMS Vernon, the harbour pier and Portsdown Hill in the background. You can imagine how popular the room was when there was a Royal Review of the Fleet. Everyone remembered where we lived and every vantage point was full of excited spectators. Even our family doctor decided that it was a suitable time to call and then sat by the window to watch proceedings.
On the opposite side of the landing was the main bedroom from which there were doors leading to two small and one large, unlit room. One door led to a flight of wooden steps which led to an enormous roon covering the whole of the back of the house. At one time it was used as a store for furniture from the 1st Class saloons of the paddle steamers.
My bedroom was next to the sitting room. It was long and fairly narrow and had a magnificent view up the harbour. I remember sitting on the window sill watching searchlights make patterns in the sky just before the war. I was likely to awake to find a collier aground outside my window. This happened quite often as the Camber was very narrow and the boats had to manoeuvre very carefully, often when the tide was ebbing fast.
Next door to my bedroom was the bathroom. Little did we know at the time but Henry Threadingham had died on that floor."
Some of Cynthia's most vivid memories of Point were the floods that occurred periodically. These had affected the Point for centuries and the inhabitants were generally prepared for it. 102 Broad Street had been substantially altered by raising the whole of the ground floor by two or three feet and all houses along the street had boards that could be fitted into slots outside their doors and all possessed buckets of clay that could be used to seal any gaps in the boards.
Part 4 - The final days of the House at Point