‘Giving Ryde’s Past to the Future’

Historic Ryde Society Quiz Night Thursday 18 December 2025 at Yelf's Hotel, at 7p.m. for 7.30pm.    The Museum of Ryde will be closed from 20th December 2025 to the 17th February 2026.

Hear about Jabez Balfour’s unfulfilled plans for Bembridge.

Balfour (1843 – 1916) was an English businessman, Liberal politician, and fraudster.

According to the Daily Telegraph, “Jabez Spencer Balfour JP, MP was probably the greatest financial fraudster in British history, an embezzler on a Melmottian scale dwarfing the far lesser con-tricks of Trebitsch-Lincoln, Horatio Bottomley, Robert Maxwell and Jeffrey Archer combined.”

Balfour’s Bembridge – John Matthews talk