Darwin's Landscape Laboratory

Side-stepping a discussion of the merits of inscription, it’s worth drawing attention to the mulberry tree at Down House. It survives from Darwin's day - though now needing to be propped up - and still produces mulberries. All despite being filled with concrete….

Courtesy of yearly visits to a supplier based in London plus friends with a gorgeous flat on the Thames I have been in London at lest once a year for the past decade. Ian can attest to it as we tend to have a few pints in the process.

Apart from the bar visits, the walks along the Thames and the German school in Greenwich we normally try to include an excursion, if possible WHS related. But after a few years we had tackled all WHS of the extended London Hotspot plus most of the surrounding tentative sites. Eventually all that was left was Darwin's Landscape Laboratory in Downe. So on a Sunday in summer, we drove by car to Downe to see what the tentative site was about.

Quite frankly, the site was underwhelming. This is a typical, not even especially beautiful English manor of the period. The gardens show very little actual gardening and are not impressive.

The on site museum tries to tell the story of Charles Darwin's life, his family and his research. I tend not to enjoy these too much. But I learned two things of note in the process:

• In the 19th century people like Charles Darwin were quite well off, being able to afford a leisurely lifestyle without working.
• Publish or perish was not a concept in 19th century academia as Darwin sat on his results for more than a decade.

OUV

The key …

This is an interesting place to visit and one that is incredibly linked to one of the most influential thinkers of the modern period. However I am not sure if it is quite good/ coherent enough to merit a place on the World Heritage List.

The house itself is reasonably grand but mostly unremarkable, and the garden is pleasant with a few small hints of it use for the cultivation of plant species that helped reinforce Darwin's belief in the evolution of species. I found it quite hard to make any concrete links between what was in the garden and its influence on Evolutionary theory, perhaps a good tour guide would be able to eek these facts out. There was however a pleasant walk through the southern English countryside at the back of the garden, it was laid out especially for Darwin to give him time to think and stroll, and it certainly can serve the same purpose for modern visitors. There is an audio tour of the house, narrated by the peerless Sir David Attenborough, who is something of a British cultural institution, and this did a good job of explaining Darwin's life in the house and the works he is most famous for.

The house is located just outside London, but still inside the southern boundary of the M25 ring road, if you don't have your own transport the you can get the train to Bromley South where bus 146 can take you on to the House.

This …