Navigational tips and beauty spots around the south-east coast of the Isle of Wight.
Darwin of Shanklin
Charles Darwin in the 1850s, with lots on his mind
The prominent vertical structure on the sea front of Shanklin is a lift that carries visitors down the cliff to the beach. Next to the car park just south of the lift is the Norfolk House Hotel, where Darwin stayed for two weeks in 1858 after fleeing his home in Kent where scarlet fever had taken hold, claiming his son Charles. He moved there from the King’s Head Hotel in Sandown, where he wrote the abstract to what would become ‘On the Origin of Species.’