Freshwater Bay was home for 40 years to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Queen Victoria’s poet laureate - the longest serving poet laureate that this country has ever had. It was while living in Freshwater that he wrote the poetry that he is now most famous for.
A Celebrity Circle formed around him which is now better known as ‘The Freshwater Circle’. Besides Julia Margaret Cameron, this included: painter G.F. Watts, actress Ellen Terry, dramatist Henry Taylor, nonsense-rhyme writer Edward Lear, astronomer John Herschel, novelist William Makepeace Thackeray and daughter Anny (also a writer), photographer and author Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ fame) and others.
His exquisite former home has now been loving restored to its former glory and can be visited by prior arrangement – both house and gardens. The in-house audio guide is second-to-none, and you will be given a brief tour of the exterior at the start or end of your visit. This includes the enthralling Victorian garden – designed and lovingly tended by experts in Victorian gardens.
Cameron is now regarded as one of THE most influential portrait photographers of all time. Let us show you what was highly special about her work which she herself quite rightly considered to be ‘high art’.
You might like to take a look at the documentary-style piece of research I carried out pe- and during lockdown. A lot of thanks for the world recognition she now justifiably receives is due to to her great-niece Virginia Woolf, who did much to promote her great-aunt’s work.
His good friend Julia Margaret Cameron and family bought what were originally two cottages next door to his property (now known as Dimbola Museum and Galleries). During the time she lived there, she started to take portrait photographs in her studio, both of local unknown neighbours, but also of the world’s ‘great and good’ who beat a path to Tennyson’s door and were cunningly lured into her lair to sit for her.
Be guided by us round Julia’s former home and workplace – now a Museum and Galleries with part-permanent and part-changing exhibitions. In the Julia Margaret Cameron galleries, discover how much suffering was routinely required in the name of art! This charming old house still bears the appearance of quirkiness and eccentricity which is quite worthy of her.
Should you be more a fan of the 1960s than the 1860s, you will be interested to learn that the world returned to Freshwater in 1970! Follow this amazing story in words, photographs and posters in Dimbola’s 1970 IOW Festival Gallery. Meet Boy Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and many more. (The permanent Festival exhibition includes a lot of material relating to the Festivals of 1968 and 1969 too.)
No doubt you will stand in the garden next to the Jimi Hendrix statue for the obligatory photo! Or you may like to sit out on the sunny terrace while enjoying delectable cream teas and the like from Dimbola’s award-winning tearoom (always keeping one eye trained on Jimi as you admire stunning views up the coastal road and across the Tennyson Downs leading down to the sea).
Allow your gaze to follow Jimi’s –dreamily sweeping across the hallowed fields of Afton Down, where he headlined the world’s largest ever outdoor music festival three weeks before his untimely death.
The tearoom was once Julia’s salon where movers and shakers of Victorian society were once wont to gather and linger. But that was then - now you will find it well-stocked with sumptuous home-baked goodies.
Further properties occupied by other prominent members of their Freshwater Circle are dotted round the village. Superstars and celebrities of their day, discover why the world and his wife sought out England’s most renowned poet while at the same time often trying to give the famous photographer the slip!
Suitably refreshed, we will move on up the road to Farringford, the Tennyson family home for around 40 years. This has recently been authentically and magnificently restored to its former glory inside and out. You can’t fail to be blown away by its loveliness and minute attention to detail. As a staff member recently commented, ‘you feel as though Tennyson has just left the room and will return any second’.
The audio guide is second-to-none, and you will be given a brief tour of the exterior at the start or end of your visit. This includes the enthralling Victorian garden – designed and lovingly tended by real experts.
Take a peep inside the quaint St. Agnes Church – one of the country’s mere handful of thatched churches, built on land donated by Hallam Tennyson, son of the great poet. It snuggles on a sunny spot at the bottom of the Down, opposite what was once the home and workplace of Queen Victoria’s piano tuner (now home to The Piano Café). It is also opposite Orchards, the delightful village stores where the owners still possess records of Tennyson’s daily purchases!
If you have time to spare and want to blow away some cobwebs and maybe glimpse some wildlife, we can take a climb up Tennyson Down with its awe-inspiring views of both The Solent AND The English Channel.
Not for nothing did these views inspire so many of his world-famous lines.Tennyson himself, who walked up here twice daily, declared that the air here was ‘worth sixpence a pint’!
Robert Hooke, contemporary of Isaac Newton and referred to as ‘England’s Leonardo’ was born in Freshwater, Isle of Wight on July 18, 1635. He discovered and named the living cell in 1665 and is known for ‘Hooke’s Law’.Influenced by his native West Wight, his contributions to the ‘new’ natural sciences of geology and palaeontology were ground-breaking (example - he was the first person to study fossils through a microscope).
He also took issue with The Bible’s view on the earth’s age and hypothesised on the extinction of species. One can imagine Tennyson and Charles Dickens discussing this 200 years later during one of the latter’s visits to the poet at Farringford.
Interestingly, some of the stones from the cottage where Hooke grew up were deemed to be used in the building of St. Agnes Church - one of them is even dated!
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+44 (0)1983 754444 - +44 (0)7932 157326 - jane.richter@outlook.com
