Sandown - Famous Connections

Famous Connections

• John Wilkes (former Lord Mayor of the City of London) owned a house and stayed regularly in Sandown. There is a memorial plaque on the site of his house at the corner of High Street. On Sunday mornings Wilkes would go to Shanklin Church, and after the service would walk across the fields to Knighton with David Garrick and his wife.
• Sir Isaac Pitman is said to have worked on his system of shorthand here.
• Lewis Carroll spent long holidays here, and first met Gertrude Chataway on the beach. Gertrude inspired The Hunting of the Snark.
• Charles Darwin started the "abstract" which became the Origin of Species at the King's Head Hotel (now Bar) in Sandown in mid-July 1858. He moved on to Shanklin's Norfolk House Hotel at the end of July and stayed for about two weeks. Darwin returned to the Isle of Wight for holidays on several other occasions.
• The composer Richard Strauss spent summer holidays at the Ocean Hotel in 1902 and 1903, and worked on his Symphonia Domestica while there.
• Members of the groups Level 42 and the Bees used to go to Sandown High School, and began their musical careers in Sandown. The playwright and director Anthony Minghella was another former pupil of Sandown High School.
• Jimmy Tarbuck was one of many performers who spent summer seasons on Sandown Pier.
• HMS Sandown is the name ship of the Sandown class of mine countermeasures vessels. It commemorates a wartime namesake, which served as a minesweeper, having formerly been a passenger ferry.
• Karl Marx visited Sandown Library to read the Isle of Wight County Press.
• Eric Charles Twelves Wilson V.C. was born in Sandown.