Suffolk 2019

Suffolk is a wonderful visit, an area off my radar for virtually the whole of my life, apart from the odd sortie to Woodbridge many years ago for family reasons, when I was a child, and a Christmas house party in the same estuary town with a crowd of fellow young people from my church. Then there was the odd couple of days in Southwold on a trip to Norfolk, posh resort with lots of signs as I remember.

But these were  coastal visits, detours off the main A12 arterial route from London to Norfolk. This time I wanted to strike into the interior of the county, get another slice of deepest England. I had read about the fine old towns and villages in sleepy Suffolk, with their pink, blue and yellow pastel cottages. Now it was time to check it out and lo and behold you do feel like you are in the very bosom of England as you traverse its gentle rolling countryside.

I took the direct route from the south coast, up the M23, round the M25 to Dartford, through the tunnel and then off the M25 onto the A12. Heading up the A12 on a Tuesday afternoon was hardly a song filled jaunt. I didn’t expect such a congested crawl out of London en route to what is after all a sparsely populated and very rural part of England. Surely not that many people live out this way! But congested it was, and by the time I left the main road in Colchester to take the road to Sudbury, the evening was drawing in. 

I’d chosen the Willowmere caravan and camping park from an internet search, situated on Bures Rd in the valley of the River Stour, on the southern outskirts of Sudbury, to pitch my tent, and what a good choice it was too. Neat, tidy and fall as a pancake, with spotless washroom facilities and cropped lawn, complete with picnic tables, it couldn’t have been a better choice. Here you can bring your caravan, motor caravan or tent. And it was quiet, really quiet, midweek before the main bank holiday weekend and with a mere smattering of occupied pitches. No queues for the showers, sinks and loos! I managed to exit the site just as the weekend crowd began to seep in. Glorious timing.

Sudbury looked a fine little market town on the river Stour and surrounded by water meadows, which made a great base for a three day visit. I’d never even heard of it before but enjoyed walking its rather expansive centre late at night, trying to spot seriously medieval wobbly houses, of which there were a few, part of the rich heritage introduced by Flemish weavers and wool merchants. Thomas Gainsborough the painter was a local luminary, and his birthplace is now a museum. Market Hill, virtually the centre of town, is filled with market stalls on Thursdays and Saturdays. There’s even a rail station, a terminus of a little branch line making Sudbury an evocative destination. Sadly, I didn’t get to see as much of Sudbury as it warranted, becoming better acquainted with Costa, Pizza Express and the Sainsbury’s cafe for breakfast or evening meal!

I have never seen so many wobbly blancmange houses anywhere else in the UK as in Suffolk. The rolling countryside conceals goodness knows how many towns and villages with groaning gables, skew angled corners, gravity defying extremities, every shade of pastel daub and timber framed medieval masterpieces, including one that was used as Harry Potters birthplace. So if you want your twenty first century ‘appreciation of fine straight lines’ head scrambled, wander the Suffolk lanes for a few days and marvel at the way they used to build, meandering through every possible permutation of vertical and horizontal building construction.

The town of Lavenham is just about top of the league for wobbly houses, with more medieval structures than you’d see in a sword and sorcery epic. You enter the town past the fine old church at the top of the hill, then dip down into a smorgasbord of merry old England. The town square is the icing on the cake, with its splendid white and grey timbered Guildhall and colourful hotch potch of ancient dwellings scattered around the square. 

Lavenham town square

Laven

Lavenham plumblines!

The Guildhall, ‘one of the finest timber framed buildings in Britain’ is now a National Trust museum with an easy to follow history tour including reports of how the authorities dealt with local ‘sturdy rogues’ who got in trouble with the law. Indeed part of the Guildhall was used to incarcerate ner do wells. The building has also been used as tenements for poor families, a workhouse and a meeting hall for the Corpus Christi Guild. And there’s a tearoom of course with outside space! 

Lavenham Guildhall

Lavenham Town Square

Yards away is Little Hall, a honey coloured half timbered affair advertised as a unique family home and lauded by Simon Jenkins as one of England’s thousand best houses. It would be no surprise if the gingerbread man and his family stepped out the front door, such was its excess of quaintness. It was built in the 14th century for a family of clothiers, improved in the 15th century, and then modernised in Tudor times with fireplace, upper floor over the central hall and also glazed windows. The house was rescued by the Gayer Anderson twin brothers in the inter war years, restoring the house and making it their home. After all that I never got to visit it! Incidentally don’t you dare step into the town square unless you arrive in a classic Triumph sporting a cravat and flat cap!

Gingerbread man's house?

Lavenham street

One evening I stumbled upon a footpath out of town across the fields and ventured forth for a while. A local told me that it’s the done thing to take this route to a pub somewhere across the fields and return after suitable refreshment. How civilised. 

Long Melford is a few miles down the road from Lavenham, just down from Melford Hall, a fine old stately home and National Trust property. Long Melford by name and nature, it must be one of the longest high streets in the country, especially if you walk it as I did from the Melford Hall end of the village. Here one gets the feeling of already being on a  country estate whilst still on the main road. A fine Suffolk church sits on top of the hill, and from its skirts sweeping common land bordered by a line of settlement on one side and the wall of Melford Hall on the other, siphons down to the village which hugs both sides of the main A134 road.

Long Melford

Melford Hall has been in the Hyde Parker family since 1786 and they still reside in one wing of the house. The site goes back a lot further than that, as in most of England you’re standing on hundreds if not thousands of years of history. The Abbotts of Edmunsbury got here first and used the site between 1000 and 1500. Once you’ve passed through the gate lodge and parked up you can pretend to be an aristocrat by walking up the driveway and being tempted to divert your route to the incredibly civilised looking tables and chairs of the cafe scattered over the lawn and nestled comfortably alongside the house. Otherwise you can swing round to face the front of the house with its two symmetrical wings and head straight for the entrance, do the tour and run out of time to do the cafe as I did. Of interest to some might be the tales of naval adventures on the high 

seas, pictures by Beatrix Potter in the nursery and the original Jemima Puddle duck toy.

Melford Hall itself had a serous fire in the Second World War which seems to have started during a party involving servicemen. It’s all a bit hush hush but evidently the fire was started from a bit of laxity from the military to the extent that the 100 year rule of keeping the files secret has been applied to the event to protect the families of those involved in any misdemeanour. Another interesting anecdote was the story of the Luftwaffe pilot who used Melford Hall as a landmark in the Second World War when flying over for bombing raids. Years later he visited the hall because he wanted to see what he had seen from the air for himself.

Bury St Edmunds is a town I had never visited before it being somewhat off the beaten track, but it was well worth it. A favourite of Charles Dickens, it proved to be an ideal place to film a costume drama with its cobbled thoroughfares, abbey ruins, cathedral and numerous assorted further wobbly constructions. Driving into the town on a pleasant summer’s evening I found myself transported back in time in the main square, a handsome affair bordered on the one side by the very hostelry that used to accommodate Charles Dickens, an ivy clad coach and horses type building, and on the other by an arch which gives access to the abbey gardens, a very pleasant park containing the ruins of the 11th century abbey of St Edmund. This area is classic old England, with St Edmundsbury cathedral as well to admire just adjacent to the abbey gardens. The cathedral was once part of the great abbey of St Edmunds, one of the richest and most powerful Benedictine monasteries in England.

St Edmundsbury Cathedral

Bury St Edmunds

Bury St Edmonds is a feast for the history buff. You can wander its genteel streets and admire the  timeless old English feel of the place, although I was brought down to earth with a bump when accosted by a homeless young man for money. Homelessness is a present scourge on the UK, reflecting perhaps a more fractured and sick society. I am familiar with the south coast, places like Brighton where there have been many homeless people. Now you find them in salubrious suburbs and well to do tourist honeypots like Windsor and Bury St Edmunds. I offered to buy said gentleman something to eat, but when I returned from McDonalds with burger and fries he had disappeared into thin air. I wandered around the town centre for a few minutes looking for him without success. I guess I appeared like a homeless person myself as a man asked me if I was alright. I explained what had happened and ate the food myself in the end. I still had room for a proper sit down meal at the local Thai restaurant.

Just a few miles out of town is Ickworth House, another expansive Italianate National Trust property well worth a visit. It sits in vast grounds and seemed to have sucked up half the local population into its bucolic bosom, whether wandering the grounds and deer park, touring the house or even visiting the hotel and enjoying the tea rooms. It’s a pretty impressive pile, with a central rotunda and two large wings thrown out to either side, one of which houses the hotel. 

Curves of Ickworth House

There is a great walk out the back of the mansion through the gentle gradients of the Suffolk countryside to the St. Mary’s estate church and then on down to the kitchen garden which sits on the edge of the local river Linnet. Meanwhile the house visit has a great servants quarters in the basement area, possibly the best I have seen in an English house with Workshop, mocked up Senior Servants’ room, Servants’ bedroom, Hall Boys rooms, Finishing Kitchen and storage areas, etc. set off great corridors. Once you’ve done below stairs, you work your way up through the house to the serious art and furniture sections. I ended up there rather too close to closing time so did a quick reccy before descending the stairs back to the courtyard. 

Now how about a diversion to Kersey, which has been considered one of England’s ten best villages, and at the centre of an area known as the wool towns. It comprises one main street that loops down from the church at the top of the hill, through a ford at the bottom, then up through an extreme concentration of mediaeval dwellings using most pleasing pastel shades to the top of the hill at the other end. A great way to see Suffolk in miniature. The Bell Inn is as rustically ancient as they come, has a great beer garden and does a brilliant ploughman’s lunch which I greatly enjoyed. Kersey would be a wonderful start and finish to a walking or cycling trip in my humble opinion.

Kersey colour

Kersey plus ford

No visit to Suffolk would be complete without a visit to Flatford and Willie Lott’s house, scene of Constable’s famous painting and now a National Trust site. I did it en route home, with a small diversion off our beloved A12. Once you’ve parked up, you walk down to the river where there is a   light and airy tea room on the riverbank. Why not just stop there and watch the river go by over a cuppa and return to your car? Alternatively you can walk down to the site of the famous scene and admire what Constable saw in the 19th century at Flatford Mill and Willie Lott’s house. There’s also an exhibition of Constable’s paintings. You can even hire a rowing boat and meander down the Stour, or simply take a riverside walk. Suffolk definitely hits the sweet spot if you want a good solid dollop of England. 

Willy Lott's house

Samos

Can't beat that bougainvillea!

You can’t go wrong by choosing Samos as your next Greek destination. It’s a very mountainous, wooded and verdant island nudged up against the Turkish mainland in the east Aegean, a hop over from Kusadasi, well known tourist town on the west Turkish coast, and in turn Ephesus, a magnificent set of ruins from biblical times just a sheep’s tail’s distance from the sea. Continuing  the biblical theme, Samos is also a boat ride from Patmos, island of the cave of St. John of the Revelation as well as tourist fleshpot for decades worth of visitors from backpackers to religious pilgrims. So Samos is well placed for interesting excursions.

Samos also strikes one as pretty unspoilt. The hotel I stayed in on the south coast just ten minutes ride from the popular tourist town of Pythagoria was part of a small cluster of hotels and restaurants somewhat isolated on an undeveloped coastline and only reached by a twisting B road snaking amongst olive trees and small homesteads. It seems that the Gods of tourism have made Samos a little special in accessibility. To land at the one airport, nestled up against the sea a few minutes west of Pythagoria, a special licence is needed due to the shortness of the runway. Our landing with Enter Air (who? Yes quite, Polish I think) was uneventful but the next batch of holiday makers experienced the landing being aborted first time round. Imagine coming in to land on a sun kissed Greek island and then the plane suddenly thrusts upwards at the last second with no communication to the passengers as to what went wrong. A German airline that flew regularly to Samos went bust. They flew 30 flights a week to the island, alas no longer, so even more inaccessibility.

You can of course reach the island by boat, the romantic way of travelling around the Greek islands of course! One family came from Mykonos into the port of Karlovasi, a town on the north coast. The big boats used to come into Vathi or Samos Town, the main town on the island, but no longer due to the migrant crisis which has deposited a large migrant camp of thousands in the middle of this town of 24000.

Our hotel was right on the beach with a full water sports programme, ideal for anyone who wants to learn to sail, windsurf or paddleboard. A full team provides coaching and practice in ideal conditions. Learning to sail in the azure waters of the Greek islands has got to beat wearing a wetsuit in the grey waters of the southern UK especially when those Atlantic winds blow. A beach stretches into the distance both east and west, and although pebbly as many of the beaches around here are, provides ideal swimming as long as you’ve got a decent pair of beach shoes. 

View from my window

Our package also provided full access to a range of bikes, mountain and hybrid, that could be taken out at any time although sensibly early on in the day or after 3 in the afternoon to avoid the highest temperatures. Indeed this is what attracted me to the holiday in the first place as a week with a biking theme. Which leads me into a few trips I made from the hotel during my two weeks out there. One of course was to Pythagoria, a half hour cycle away which I did on two or three occasions. There are hills both ways, but possibly worse coming back as there is a long slow climb up out of the harbour after a hopefully fun time in town . But nothing especially daunting for the reasonably fit. 

Another good local trip is to Psili Ammos, a small beach resort just a few minutes east, but this trip is more for beach bums than cyclists as you’ve barely scorched the backside of your Lycra before descending into the harbour. Now if you want to do something a little more rigorous then head for a more demanding trip along dusty coastal up and down tracks but being rewarded with great views of the Greek coastline and looking across to Turkey. This route bypasses Psili Amos and needs a mountain bike, but there’s a lovely quiet beach at Klima with facilities waiting for you at the other end.

Klima tranquillity

If you want to go further afield there is the hike up to the wind farm high above Pythagoria but be warned that unless you’re a good cyclist you’ll find it challenging. It was my very first trip on a mountain bike and I’m quite fit although not mountain bike fit, so I lagged behind my four fellow riders, two of whom were serious cyclists, you can just tell by the way they dress! You take a right off the main Pythagoria road then follow quite a long uphill track mostly through woodland to the summit. In the heat and given rough stretches of track it’s no picnic but I managed it in the end despite a few breaks and the odd stretch walking my bike.

Wind turbine - a long tough ride up!

My longest excursion which I can recommend took me south to north across the island to Samos Town. After a short ride through the coastal stretch there is a long uphill spell through the green wooded slopes that characterise so much of Samos. Eventually the road flattens out and over the spine of the hills you go until you reach the top of the hill going down into Samos. Then there is a long downward descent into the town on a very good slowly curving road which provides great views of the bay in which the town sits. The town itself is worth a visit, arrayed around a large bay with a long seafront road. The town centre is pleasant enough and although it is easy to spot the presence of migrants, the town still very much has a touristy feel. 

Samos centre

German border boat I think

Being a sucker for punishment I decided to visit Moyrtia beach, a beach on the east coast a further cycle ride from Samos Town. My directions were to take the road back up the hill and then take a left turn to a particular town. Somewhere the left turn got lost as I reached the top of the very long hill after much earnest pedalling to find a sign to my destination pointing back down the hill! No way was I going back down that hill so I decided on a change of plan, to hit somewhere on the coast even if it wasn’t that beach. Taking a different road, I suddenly espied a sign to the original beach and went for it. It was worth it, a secluded cove with minimal infrastructure, moored boats bobbing in the sea and plenty of potential snorkelling territory, a chance to sunbathe for an hour or two. The only snag was a long winding descent to the bay which would have to be conquered on my return. If you like hills, Samos is the island for you!

Moyrtia beach - do't tell anyone!

Pythagoria is a tidy little resort on the south coast as I said just shy of the main airport. The main street cuts straight as an arrow down to the seafront where it hits the harbour at 90 degrees, just as if Pythagoras, the great man himself had laid it out with a giant set square. Here you can head right or left along the promenade, choosing which of the innumerable restaurants and bars to visit. If you go left, the harbour curves round past a flotilla of moored boats and eventually reaches a beach area. If you go right, a shorter distance brings you to another, but smaller beach.

Pythagoria harbour front

  

Pythagoria is of course known as the home of Pythagoras and the harbour boasts a monument to the classic mathematician in the form of a large set square. Pythagoras was by all accounts a bit of a polymath and not just a dab hand at maths. In fact he was evidently somewhat of a mystic and into occultic activities as well. 

Yes it's the Pythagoras monument!

Pythagoria also has a castle right on the clifftop at the south end of the town with some great views of the town and surrounding coastline. It also gives a super vantage point for the airport runway if you’re into plane spotting as the runway virtually falls into the sea, and any plane taking off or landing might brush anyone with a large Afro standing on the battlements. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to stay long enough to see any action, Samos airport is no Gatwick.

Pythagoria castle on the cliff front

One interesting excursion in the foothills of Pythagoria is the ancient water aqueduct which serviced the needs of the then city of Samos, which confusingly lay on the south side of the island, whereas modern day Samos Town lies on the north coast. There was an underground section of the aqueduct which extended about 1100m and you can now visit by putting on a hard hat and taking a tour. There are different grades of tours and we did the basic 20m one where a guide takes you into the hillside and along straight stretches of tunnel. There are two sections in the tunnel itself, the upper section you walk along looking down through grills to the lower section which carried the piping. The lower section alternates pipe/open section/pipe as you follow its course. 

I was able to see a fair bit of the island by taking an excursion by minibus with a Dutch guide, and also by hiring a car on another day and being upgraded to a jeep (lucky me!). Theodora our guide was a plain speaking lady who wore her heart on her sleeve. I quizzed her about different groups of tourists coming to the island and should never have mentioned the Russians, she proceeded to tell me they were banned from two hotels on the island. She also waxed lyrical about the migrant crisis, on the sadness of it rather than railing against migrants. Theodora had married a German and cut virtually all her ties with the Netherlands. She obviously loved the island and knew plenty of residents, and there was a lot to love about it, the climate, bountiful food untouched by chemicals and pesticides, the Mediterranean lifestyle, what’s not to like. 

Desirable spot

She took us up through the spine of the island, thrusting north west via a monastery built flush against the aforementioned aqueduct and overlooking Pythagoria, then a shop on the forested mountain slopes selling Greek honey straight from the production line and sweet wine. This was followed by a trip up the zig zags high up into the mountain village of Platanos to visit a superb restaurant perched through divine inspiration over a glorious view to the sea both to the north and the south across well watered mountain slopes. Here we had possibly the best lunch I have ever had, a mixture of divine starters shared between us. We then proceeded to the north coast where we headed along the coastal highway past various settlements and resorts, including the sprawl of Karlovasi whose harbour front looked like a relic of the Second World War with its concrete ambience and grey harbour warehouses. Eventually we ended up at Potami beach, alluringly spaced out below our twisting tree lined route along the craggy cliff face. Here we parked up and followed a stream up through wooded glades to a rock pool, where we donned our swimmers and waded up to chest height (or neck height if you’re short!) through a small ravine to an even more secluded pool where a waterfall chucks it down over your shoulders if you’re up for standing under it. Here we take selfies and indulgent shots, one of which  encapsulates the excitement of a Richmond holiday, a semi submerged lady, arms outstretched sideways and an expression of superhuman enjoyment on her face.

I have deep roots

My jeep tour on the last day of the holiday took me first of all down to the south east corner of the island, a spectacular ride down a mountainous spine with almost constant views of the seductive sea below. Always in the back of my mind with a new vehicle, how long would the petrol last as the empty gauge now flashed up. Why hadn’t I got petrol earlier? As it happened there was enough to get me down to the harbour at Posidonio for a coffee and back up to Samos Town for a fill up. Distances aren’t great in Samos with reserve in the tank. It was still a big relief to top up. Off I went again from Samos Town along the coast road west, intending to reach Potami beach later in the afternoon for a swim land sunbathe. Kokkari was the first stop, an attractive resort with cute winding streets some of which climb up a little hill by the harbour front. The usual bevy of restaurants and tourist shops lace the seafront vicinity. If you take a walk along the front to the east and are prepared to take your trainers off to negotiate a bit of surf you reach a very nice beach with a hilly promontory and its own cafe. I had lunch here but minus the beach experience on a disappointingly overcast day. However as I left the sky brightened and more sunseekers appeared.

My trusty jeep

Kokkari - good spot for a second home!

Onward I went along the north coast and took a left turn up to the mountain village of Vourilotes, home of our Dutch guide and lauded as very beautiful, and so it proved to be. Mountains mean mountains even on a small island like Samos, and we are talking serious uphill inclines of the switchback variety. However the road was good despite its tortuous route, and the destination was worth it, a maze of intricate lanes with houses packed in like toothpaste in a tube. I found the village square, dinky sized and taken up substantially with cafe tables. Time for a welcome drink. It was well worth the climb, a super place to live I guess if you can fit in with Greek culture, with views to die for and an enviable quality of life, as long as you’re not bothered about the clock. The views were spectacular, with green wooded hills tumbling way down into the Med.

Fancy a proper view

Cafe hidden in high mountain village

Once back on the coast road I sped on through the little coastal towns and settlements but by the time I reached Karlovasi the sky had become overcast and the beach wasn’t so attractive. I did however sit on Potami beach and had a read of Jordan Peterson’s ‘12 Rules for Life’ before having a coffee and driving as far as the main road would take me, which wasn’t much further before a track took over. Ok for my jeep if I had the time, but not for normal cars. One of my fellow holiday makers took a hired car on one of the minor roads but it proved to be an unpleasant experience! So make sure you get s good briefing before taking a vehicle out on Samos.

Potami Beach

Is that Pyth in the distance

Typically being me I decided to do the ‘Valley of the Nightingales’ on my return ride. This destination had been mentioned to me as a worthy trip by Sheila, our very friendly young Belgian receptionist at the hotel. It meant another diversion from the coastal road up into the mountains for another idyllic village, Manolates, floating high on the slopes. So after climbing through the forest with one hairpin bend after another I finally arrived well into the evening with dusk descending. You really needed an afternoon there to enjoy the winding streets with lots of alluring arty craft shops and restaurants, or the local signposted walks. Never mind, I thoroughly recommend to aspiring Samos visitors. 

Dinky winding streets

The night was drawing in, and I ended up driving back to Pythagoria (I needed a break from hotel food!) for an evening meal on the harbour front, which had to be done! I ordered a classic lamb dish, which came with copious potato but little else when I was expecting vegetables. I think possibly something was lost in translation but in the end I got a late plate of legumes and a dessert on the house. That just about brought me to the end of the holiday!

Down House

Down House, home of Charles Darwin

In the south east environs of Greater London, close to Biggin Hill airport and not far from the scarp slope of the North Downs lies Down House. This was renowned as the home for many years of the nineteenth century naturalist, Charles Darwin and his family. It lies on a country lane secluded from the glare of publicity, but has attracted the attention of some of the best known people in our society, such as Andrew Marr, the broadcaster, David Attenborough the naturalist and Melvyn Bragg the broadcaster and commentator. I’m no great supporter of evolutionary theory, being more at the ‘intelligent design’ end of the origins of the universe debate, but it’s a worthwhile day out to get to grips with a man that changed the course of world history.

To get there from my neck of the woods I head up the A23/M23, then onto the M25 east along the bottom of London, leave at junction 6, then take a tortuous route over the North Downs up hill and down dale to get to your destination. Down House has a reasonably sized car park but bear in mind on a busy summer’s day it could be tricky to park.

They managed to get me to join English Heritage at the beginning of the tour for £60 odd squid which covers me for a year plus three free months. They’re pretty child friendly and you can include 6 children for free but that’s something I would have to work on! So now I’m truly middle class and middle age with National Trust and English Heritage membership! 

With his theory of evolution by natural selection and seminal work, ‘On The Origin of Species by Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life’ (1859) to give it it’s full title, Charles Darwin has had an enormous influence on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In writing it he described it as ‘like confessing a murder.’ His idea that man had evolved from simpler creatures was an incendiary one that would turn accepted wisdom upside down. That wisdom of course resided in the church which for centuries had taught that God alone had created man in all his fullness. Their revealed truth was now to be threatened by a potentially godless philosophy barely in its infancy. 

So here at Down House Charles Darwin spent his later years and you get a good picture of the man himself from the upstairs and downstairs tour. It’s a good size house, typically what you’d expect of a man of privilege with a large family. He had ten children altogether with his beloved wife, a woman he considered a great blessing in his life. The house stands pretty snug against the main road, but hidden by a substantial brick wall, surrounded by expansive gardens but pretty flat land stretching away into the distance at the back, perfectly pleasant countryside although it wouldn’t have been my choice. Funnily enough, the memoir of Emma Darwin’s mother recalled that the family had regretted Charles not settling in a ‘prettier’ area of the south.

Start the tour upstairs and you find yourself in a room charting Darwin’s earlier years and his voyage on the HMS Beagle around the world and especially to the Galápagos Islands. That was quite a trip, taking in the Canary isles, South America, the Falklands, Australia, and South Africa. How did he end up on the Beagle? The captain of HMS Beagle, Robert FitzRoy, asked his superiors for a well educated and scientific gentleman companion to accompany him as an unpaid naturalist and the Cambridge professors recommended the 22 year old Charles Darwin. 

 Darwin came from a privileged family and one grandfather was Josiah Wedgewood, the famous English potter, entrepreneur and anti slavery campaigner, whilst the other, Erasmus Darwin, had been a Doctor who wrote a book called ‘Zoonomia,’ whose idea was that one species could ‘transmute’ into another. Darwin was no lover of his classics education at the Anglican Shrewsbury School he attended, and dabbled in Chemistry for which he was condemned  by his headmaster and nicknamed ‘Gas’ by his schoolmates. He was sent to study medicine at Edinburgh university but his education strayed into other areas such as being taught the art of stuffing birds by John Edmonstone, a freed South American slave. It was here that he encountered free thinkers denying the divine design of human facial anatomy and the argument that animals shared all the human mental capacities.

Meanwhile, back in Down House, also upstairs is a reconstruction of the cabin that Darwin lived in on his voyage. The displays go through Darwin’s progressive thinking on his new theory and his tussle with the church authorities, notably the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce. There must have been an extra twist as his wife was a Christian, whereas Darwin somewhat lost any faith he had, and when he lost his beloved young daughter of ten, Annie, to scarlet fever he stopped attending the local church. His family would go and he went off on walks instead. Marriage had been a big deal to Darwin, who made a list of pros and cons before he took the decision, in the end marrying his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood.

As regards family the message is that Darwin was not a typical Victorian father who pontificated from on high and dealt severely with any child that was seen and heard. It seems they were quite relaxed in their method of raising children and allowed their children plenty of leeway to enjoy their childhood. In one room is a series of pictures summarising each of his children, how long they lived and what they ended up doing later in life. Three were to die in childhood and seven lived long lives. It seems that Charles Darwin’s zest for scientific data and observation extended to child rearing. His first child was William Erasmus Darwin and for the first seven days of his existence Charles recorded William’s sneezing, hiccupping, yawning, stretching, suckling, screaming, and reaction to tickling.’ (Ten facts about Darwin’s ten Children by Tim M Berra). Leonard Darwin was the longest living descendant reaching the ripe old age of 93. He was an army officer, MP, an economic expert on monetary policy and later a eugenics advocate. George Howard Darwin became a professor at Cambridge and was a leading geophysicist, becoming the world’s authority on tides. Francis Darwin became a world leader in stomatal physiology. No shortage of brain power in the Darwin family line!

You can wander around Darwin’s bedroom together with its ante room which looks out over the rear gardens, whilst downstairs you can visit Darwin’s study at the front of the house with its furniture and scientific instruments set up for Darwin’s continuing studies, the drawing room at the back of the house, and also the dining room complete with enormous dining table which must have hosted some splendid meals. In his time Darwin was very much involved in the life of the local community, and did his bit as a local magistrate, treasurer of local charities and was even a close friend of the vicar. Darwin also found time to enjoy himself a bit and was a backgammon enthusiast. Every night form 8 to 8.30 he played a couple of games of backgammon with Emma, keeping the scores of every game for years.

Darwin must have been incredibly busy not only on his experiments but also keeping up with communications. Post arrived several times a day, not like the twenty first century when we make do on one delivery. But then there were probably a lot more letters written and posted then. London is recorded to have had mail delivered a stupendous 12 times a day in 1889. Darwin’s house on the outskirts of the great metropolis must have seen a lot of the postman!

A couple of photos of Darwin stand out to me. One was of him looking about in his forties, sitting for a portrait with super long sideburns but not a hint of a beard. The other is of a substantially older Darwin with an incredibly long beard giving him an Old Testament prophet look. Sadly Darwin suffered from a fair bit of ill health later in life some of which may have been rooted in ailments picked up on worldwide travel, no surprise when there were no vaccinations and comprehensive health insurance available. Unfortunately his written works reveal his struggles with diarrhoea, rashes, heart palpitations, vomiting, muscle pain and most embarrassingly exuberant flatulence. It has even been purported that he may have had Lime disease contracted from a tick bite whilst in England on field work as a young man. 

The house itself is surrounded by a substantial acreage, mostly flat, and Darwin had some mounds formed in the rear garden from his lowering of the lane and building a wall to increase privacy out front, which ameliorates the flat windswept nature of the surroundings. There is an orchard and also kitchen garden complete with old greenhouse, and a wormstone on which Darwin’s study of worms in his later life was centred. There’s also a great cafe at one end of the house which spills over into a sun trap of an outside court to enjoy your cream tea.

Down House closes at a generously late 6pm in the evening which gives plenty of time to amble inside and outside and absorb the life of this most eminent of Victorians. Whether or not you agree with his scientific theory of evolution, he had a massive impact on his generation, to the extent that when he died at he age of 73 in 1882 he was buried in Westminster Abbey, the funeral being attended by thousands of people. It has been mooted that he recanted on his deathbed on his propagation of evolution, but the evidence seems non conclusive despite evangelical opinion dearly wanting it to be so. Lady Hope apparently claimed to have visited Darwin and seen his deathbed conversion to Christianity but this was refuted by his children.