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Origin of Darwin

We all know the statue outside the library and the man behind ‘The Origin of Species,’ but what do you know of the house where our most famous Saolpian was born?

One of Charles Darwin’s (1809-1882) earliest memories was of his older sister, Caroline, peeling an orange in the drawing room of what is now Darwin House, Shrewsbury. But it was the influence of his brother and the Bellstone that launched his career upon the Beagle.

Charles’s father, Dr Robert Waring Darwin - a large man, 6’2” high, weighing over 20 stone - came to Shrewsbury in 1786, when he was 20 years old, to practice medicine. He was a successful Doctor, sympathetic to his clients, with good psychological insight, and his acute observation and exceptional memory enabled him to quickly diagnose what was wrong with his patients. He made his name when he disagreed with two established men on a diagnosis and was proved right, following which people flocked to see him - in particular the poor people from neighbouring Frankwell, who, to hold onto their pride, he made them pay for their medicine bottles.

In 1796 Robert married Susannah Wedgwood, daughter and eldest child of Josiah Wedgwood, who came with a handsome dowry of £20,000. After living briefly in St John’s Hill and The Crescent, Town Walls, in 1800 they had a new house built for them, what technically is No 2, The Mount, but in Darwin’s day became known as Mount House (or sometimes just The Mount), and by the 1930s as Darwin House.

It was an unusual location for such a solidly middle class family. It was not on the more fashionable, English side of town and for years earlier the land had been a rubbish dump. The house’s design is also somewhat severe, perhaps reflecting that its architect, who is thought to have been Joseph Bromfield, started life as a plasterer (although he later became Mayor). It certainly reflects work that Bromfield did on properties such as The Rectory, Berrington, which he designed for Noel Hill in 1804.

Both Robert and his wife were very interested in botany and zoology and their gardens were filled with rare species, shrubs, trees and flowers. There was also a kitchen garden and vines, and pigeons that were known for their beauty and tameness. Indeed, it was considered a great honour to be invited to walk in the gardens on Sunday afternoons.

Today the front garden is pretty much as it was, but Robert later sold off the land at the east side (where the street named Darwin Gardens stands today), and the terrace behind and the land sloping down to the River Severn is now part of a neighbouring property (what is called Doctor’s Field, but whose name long predates Dr Darwin).

In 1832 the Doctor had a glass hothouse built (that has since been replaced by brick), in which were planted banana trees and nine large orange pippins, in pots. But the idea was not his own, as he revealed in a letter he wrote the following year to his son, Charles, while he was away on the HMS Beagle, “in consequence of your recommendation in your first letter I got a Banana tree. I sit under it and think of you in similar shade.”

Robert and Susannah had six children. Charles Robert Darwin was the second son and fifth child, and was born at Mount House on 12th February 1809 (upstairs, in what is now an office!). In 1817 Charles started a day school run by a Unitarian Minister, on 13 Claremont Hill (at the back of the house that is still there) – the same year that his mother died. The following summer he moved to Shrewsbury School (then located in the town’s lending library) where conditions were harsh – the school beds were damp, the food was poor, and when Charles’s father asked whether his son, who had just recovered from Scarlet Fever, could have an extra blanket he received a disgruntled reply from the Headmaster, Dr Butler.

From an early age Charles Darwin was interested in collecting things - whether coins and seals, or, encouraged by his mother, birds eggs and minerals. But he was also passionate about sport and loved fishing and in particular shooting.

His brother meanwhile was very interested in chemistry, and the two boys made a laboratory in the garden tool house. “I was allowed to aid him as a servant in most of his experiments,” Charles later wrote. “The subject interested me greatly and we often used to go on working till late at night. This was the best part of my education at school, for it showed me practically the meaning of experimental science.” But the brothers’ activities were rare for the period and rare for a school that focussed, rather narrowly but what was common in those days, on languages and the classics. As a result Charles’s Headmaster told him he thought chemistry a waste of time and the boys nicknamed him ‘Gas’.

It was someone who Charles called ‘old Mr Cotton’ that introduced him to geology – a man who knew a lot about rocks and pointed to him Shrewsbury’s famous glacial erratic, the Bellstone (that’s still there, in front of the Morris Hall). It was clearly a memory hat lodged firmly in his mind, for Charles later wrote, “I felt the keenest delight when I first read of the action of icebergs in transporting boulders.”

Charles took a while to find his feet after leaving Shrewsbury. First he studied Medicine in Edinburgh, but his father thought him unsuited and instead sent him to Cambridge, to be a parson, which did not suit him either. But the university experience was not totally wasted for, having finished his exams in 1831, Charles started attending geology and botany lectures and discovered books that, he wrote, “stirred up in me a burning zeal to add even the most humble contribution to the noble structure of Natural Science.”

That summer Charles accompanied the Cambridge geologist, Professor Sedgwick, who first stayed at the family’s house on The Mount, on a visit to North Wales. And when Charles returned to Shrewsbury there was a letter from his Cambridge tutor, the botany Professor Rev John Henslow, which was going to change his life – an invitation to go as a naturalist on the voyage of the Beagle. His father was not keen on what was also an unpaid position, but was persuaded by his brother-in-law, Josiah Wedgwood.

The family carried on living on The Mount and became one of the richest families in the town. As the saying went, ‘Three quarters of Shrewsbury owed Doctor Darwin money and he knew the medical secrets of the rest.’

Dr Darwin finally died in 1848, aged 83, and the family’s link with the town ended when two of his daughters, Catherine and Susan, both died there in 1866, after which the family put the house up for auction.

The house’s more recent owners have included the Morris brothers, who used the house as a recreational centre for their employees, and Morris & Company (of the Welsh Bridge), who built the houses in Darwin Gardens. And since 1964 it has been occupied by of the Valuation Office.

Charles Darwin married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood (Josiah’s daughter), in 1839 and they had 10 children. Charles wrote ‘The Origin of Species’ in 1859 and died in 1882, having lived much of his life in a house you can still visit in Downe, Kent.

Today a plaque at the main gate of Darwin House, Shrewsbury, honours the man with the inscription, ‘The British scientist who laid the foundation of modern evolutionary theory with his concept of the development of all forms of life through the slow-working process of natural selection.’

Even though Charles had sad memories of Shrewsbury, where his mother and two of his sisters had all died young, he also remembered the town with some affection. To his sister Catherine he wrote in 1934, while away on the Beagle, “One whole night I tried to think over the pleasure of seeing Shrewsbury again, but the barren plants of Peru gained the day,” and a year later, despite all his exotic travels, he wrote nostalgically to another sister, Susan, of their family home, “As for the view behind the house I have seen nothing like it.”

 

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