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.