Memorials & Monuments
on the Isle of Wight
- Cowes -
- Lord Randolph Churchill / Jennie Jerome -

Isle of Wight County Press

28 July 2004

A PLAQUE to commemorate the first meeting between the parents of Britain's wartime leader Winston Churchill is to be unveiled in Cowes during Cowes Week.
Lord Randolph Churchill first met and proposed to Jenny Jerome, the eldest daughter of American yachtsman and New York Times proprietor Leonard Jerome, at Rosetta Cottage on Cowes seafront during Cowes Week in 1873.
Now that historic meeting and subsequent marriage two months later is to be remembered in a slate plaque embedded in the pavement opposite Rosetta Cottage, now owned by the National Trust, in Queen's Road.
The man behind the plaque is former Cowes Mayor and town councillor Geoff Banks, who a couple of years ago recounted the tale of their first meeting to a party of visiting Americans from St Pete's Beach in Florida.
"They said we should commemorate such an historic event," said Cllr Banks.
Cowes Town Council paid £500 towards the cost of the plaque, with the balance of around £30 coming from the cultural affairs office at St Pete's Beach.
Now, 131 years after the historic meeting, the plaque is to be unveiled, on Thursday, August 12, at 4.30pm, possibly by a member of the Churchill family.
The plaque, which is made of Cornish slate, reads: "Rosetta Cottage lies the other side of the road and here in Cowes Week, 1873, Lord Randolph Churchill first met and proposed to Jenny Jerome, eldest daughter of American Leonard Jerome, then proprietor of the New York Times.
"Their marriage bore them their first son, Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, on November 30, 1874."