Mottistone
Mottistone must have been for many centuries a place of meeting for the local people, the great Long Stone or Speaker's Stone (once probably part of a dolmen) making a majestic background to the gatherings.
William, son of Azor, held the land at the time of the Conquest, then the de Insula family. It later passed by marriage to William de Clamorgan, and afterwards to Edmund de Langford. Then for some time the Cheke or Chyke family were in possession, until in 1623 George Oglander caustically records that, "Thomas Cheeke, a lewde son of a discrete father, sowlde Motson to Mr. Dillington".
The Church was founded about the end of the 12th century by one of the de Insulas. It has been very much altered and restored.
In 1638, to play its part in the defence of the Island, "Motson" had to supply two men to keep watch on the Down. This does not sound very onerous, but the population of the village can never have been large; in 1796 it numbered only thirty persons.
The beautiful manor house was begun in the first half of the 16th century. Later there seem to have been two buildings, of which the eastern one would have been the oldest, and may have become the domestic quarters.
In 1706 Sir Tristram Dillington sold Mottistone, possibly because part of the house had become unusable. From the steep hillside masses of sandy soil had avalanched on to the back of the building, which was buried almost up to the eaves; nothing was done to remove the fall, and the purchasers (the Leighs of Northcourt, Shorwell) let the Manor as a farmhouse.
In 1861 the property, then described as Great Mottistone Farm, was sold to Mr. Charles Seely of Brook House; and in 1927 his grandson, the first Lord Mottistone, together with his architect son John, decided to restore the Manor. When the mass of soil was removed the back of the house was found to be in perfect condition, retaining its early Tudor and Elizabethan character intact, as it had been preserved from any alteration. In 1953 John Seely, then the second Lord Mottistone, divided the house internally into three dwellings : his own house, called Magna; the Dower House; and the Rectory, which he gave to the Church Commissioners in perpetuity. At his death in 1963 he left the entire Mottistone estate to the nation.
On the west side of the Manor is a very fine 17th century barn, through which the carriage drive to the house passes by way of a four-centred stone wagon entrance.
