Railways on the Isle of Wight Railways on the Isle of Wight There once existed a network of railway lines on the Isle of Wight. They were opened by several companies between 1862 and 1901, and all but the Island Line closed between 1952 and 1966. A further have reopened as the Isle of Wight Steam Railway. The first railway to be built on the island ran for a distance of . It was opened in 1833 on the Nash Estate near Yarmouth. Its usage is presumed to have been for transporting brickmaking materials to and from a jetty on the Solent, and it is not
History of the Isle of Wight his brother Harold Godwinson "...went into Wight, and lay there all the summer and the autumn; and a land army was kept everywhere by the sea, although in the end it was to no avail". Both men had manors on the island - Harold at Kern and Tostig at Nunwell. After the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the Isle of Wight and the rest of England entered the Norman era. The island has never since been successfully invaded by a foreign army. In the Domesday book of 1086 the Island's name is "Wit". William the Conqueror gave its manorial rights