An Inspiring Property

Down House is celebrated as the home of the towering Victorian scientist, Charles Darwin (1809–82), who lived there from 1842 until his death 40 years later. Down was also home to Darwin’s wife, Emma (1808–96), their ten children, a modest number of domestic staff, and an assortment of pets and livestock. Situated in the rural Kent village of Downe, the house offered all the peace and privacy that Darwin needed to work on his revolutionary scientific theories. In particular, it was at Down that he developed his landmark views on evolution by natural
selection, and there too that he wrote his groundbreaking work, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) – the book which shook the Victorian world, and which has continued to influence scientific thinking ever since. In the decades which followed the storm, Darwin continued to develop his great theory and went on to publish several more key works based on his observations at Down, among them The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication (1868), and The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871).

The extensive grounds were remodelled to create a sheltered garden, and Darwin used them as his open-air laboratory. He cultivated plant specimens in his greenhouse and devised botanical experiments to study plant adaptations, often encouraging his children to assist in collecting the evidence to support his theories. Down House itself had originally been built around 1730–40,probably to replace a house of the previous century. It was
modernised in the late 18th century, almost certainly by the rich businessman and landowner, George Butler, who bought the property in 1778. After his death, the house changed hands several times until

it was bought in 1837 by the Revd J Drummond, vicar of Downe. Drummond commissioned the architect Edward Cresy to make a number of improvements, which included a new roof and the addition of a stableyard and a cottage. Then, when the Darwins purchased the house in 1842, they employed Cresy to make further changes.

From the first, Darwin found ‘the publicity of the place intolerable’, and he seems to have instructed Cresy to move the position of the front door. More significantly, a builder was commissioned to lower the entire lane that passed by the front of the house, and a new approach was laid out. Most of the changes which followed, however, were made in connection with Charles and Emma’s expanding family. In 1846, for example, the kitchen wing was expanded, adding offices on the ground floor and a schoolroom and bedrooms upstairs. The dining room was moved in 1857–58, and finally in 1876 a new two-storey extension was added, in which the ground-floor room
eventually became the scientist’s later study. In the house as seen by visitors today, Darwin’s work and

personality are vividly reflected both in the ground-floor rooms and in the gardens. Many of the original artefacts, removed when the Darwin family finally left the house at the turn of the 19th century, have since been returned and the family continues to lend and donate items. The room reconstructions are based on photographs taken in
the 1870s. In so far as possible, they appear just as they were when the great man lived here with his indefatigably supportive wife Emma. They include the ‘old study’ where Darwin wrote his books, following a rigid routine despite chronic illness and frequent good-natured interruptions by his children. It still displays his chair, writing desk
and many personal items. The family’s drawing room (with Emma’s grand piano), the billiard room and
the dining room are also on show, likewise mainly furnished with items original to the house.

Darwin was by no means the stereotypically stern Victorian father, and his children clearly enjoyed assisting in his practical experiments in the extensive grounds of the house. Today’s visitors are offered remarkable insights into the work by way of a pioneering hand-held multimedia guide. One is introduced, for example, to Darwin’s ‘weed garden’, illustrating the struggle for existence in nature. The sundial amid pretty flowerbeds highlights Emma Darwin’s role as a gardener; an iconic mulberry tree recalls family traditions; and a ‘lawn experiment’ investigates proliferation of plant species. Further afield are the ‘worm stone’, which Darwin used to measure undermining by earthworms, and a ‘fungi field’. The nearby hot-house features some of Darwin’s most fascinating experiments, involving carnivorous plants, exotic orchids and climbing species. The curiously-shaped tennis court evokes his
family and social life, and there is a working beehive in the laboratory. After a tour of the extensive kitchen gardens, visitors finally reach what is for many a place of pilgrimage: the wooded ‘Sandwalk’, Darwin’s famous ‘thinking path’, which he paced five times a day while working out his theories. In this leafy glade, effectively unaltered since Darwin’s time, it is possible, quite literally, to follow in his footsteps. In 2009, to mark the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth in 1809, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of
Species in 1859, a new exhibition was introduced on the first floor of the house.

The content examines Darwin’s life, his scientific work, and the controversy which it provoked. It includes many
previously unseen objects, with highlights including manuscript pages from the On the Origin of Species; Darwin’s hat, microscope and notebooks; and a copy of Das Kapital inscribed to him by Karl Marx.
The displays also describes Darwin’s five-year voyage aboard HMS Beagle in 1831–6, with a full-scale recreation of his ship’s cabin included. The notebooks and journals compiled on this round-the-world voyage have been digitised and annotated, allowing visitors to explore them page by page. In all, a visit to Down House is to experience the house and grounds that Charles Darwin so loved, and follow in the footsteps of one the greatest scientists and thinkers of modern times.

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Down House is celebrated as the home of the towering Victorian scientist, Charles Darwin (1809–82), who lived there from 1842 until his death 40 years later. Down was also home to Darwin’s wife, Emma (1808–96), their ten children, a modest number of domestic staff, and an assortment of pets and livestock. Situated in the rural [...]

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