Thatched cottages cluster round the churchyard in Godshill, and All Saints’ Church stands above them on a small hill. The parish story is that the builders started at the foot of the hill and kept finding their stones moved to the top overnight. Go inside for the Lily Cross, a wall painting from around 1450 of Christ crucified on a flowering lily instead of a wooden cross, whitewashed over at the Reformation and uncovered in the 19th century. There are Worsley family monuments too; their Appuldurcombe House, now an English Heritage shell, is just over 2km south-east in the Isle of Wight National Landscape. On the High Street, the model village has shown Godshill and Shanklin’s Old Village at one-tenth scale since 1952, with a model of itself inside.
