00:00On the Origin of Species was one of the most influential pieces of literature ever written.
00:06It changed and challenged perceptions. But what inspired Charles Darwin? Why did he write such
00:13an influential piece of literature? From a young boy in Shoesbury to a renowned scientist who
00:19lived in Kent for 40 years. This is the life and story of Charles Darwin.
00:32For 40 years, Darwin and his family lived in Down Village. Although now London,
00:38historically it was considered part of Kent. It was here his theories on natural selection
00:44were tried, tested and ultimately flourished. Whilst in Kent, Darwin wrote 130 scientific papers,
00:5315 books, with the most famous being On the Origin of Species. It's clear that Kent provided the ground
01:00for some of Darwin's later and most influential pieces of work. But it's here in Shoesbury that
01:07Charles Darwin's story starts. Darwin was the fifth of six children born to Robert and Susannah Darwin.
01:18Over 200 miles from Kent, Darwin was born at the Mount House in Shoesbury.
01:24His childhood home looked over the historic town. Whilst the house itself is magnificent,
01:30it's the gardens that surround the house that were the most significant part of Darwin's early life.
01:36It features aspects such as a seven acre garden, a terrace walk, and pleasure gardens. There's
01:43evidence that Darwin's family would encourage him to explore the surrounding gardens, noting down what
01:48he found. We know from documentary evidence that Charles, as a small boy, was encouraged to go into
01:56the gardens and engage with nature and the natural world. Susannah, his mother, was very much part of
02:03that and encouraged Charles to look at nature. Charles was given little tasks to do. We know also that
02:11part of these tasks were involving gathering information, what we might think of gathering data
02:16today. Charles was given a little job, for example, of counting peonies, the blooms on a peony bush,
02:24and he would record and document those. And then the next year, he would do the same
02:29thing. And then they would be able to tell the yield that it had doubled. And so this process of
02:36looking, observing, recording, documenting, writing things down was a discipline that Charles learnt
02:43from a very young age, whilst he was a little boy here, and carried that discipline right the way through
02:50to his adult life. It's believed that this was the foundation, the spark, that got Darwin interested
02:57in exploring, engaging, and noting down the natural world around him. Despite his love for studying the
03:03natural world, Darwin didn't enjoy school. His masters at Shoesbury School would describe him as
03:09an ordinary boy who showed little interest in Latin or Greek. Whereas school was focused on the classics,
03:16Darwin was focused on the natural world. Charles would try really hard. He would sometimes have to
03:23learn pages of prose and commit them to memory. Unfortunately, within a day or two,
03:30he'd completely forgotten them. Charles' mind often used to wander, and rather than being stuck inside in
03:38the classics, he would prefer to be outside walking along the river and engaging with nature and the natural
03:44world. Charles once wrote that he learned absolutely nothing of any consequence at school, which is
03:53interesting considering the volume of work that he created in his later life. So it's an interesting
04:00thought to think that he perhaps wasted his time, as he put it, at school. I think it's fair to say that
04:06Charles' home and the town of Shrewsbury had a big influence on his life. It was never far from his
04:13thoughts, never far from his heart. It was somewhere he yearned to be when he was the other side of the world.
04:24In 1831, Darwin left Shoesbury and joined the HMS Beagle on a voyage. Whilst only planned for two years,
04:32the voyage took nearly five. He was the naturalist aboard, and many specimens and observations made on
04:38this journey lay the foundations for his theories on natural selection. The ship surveyed the southern
04:44coast of South America. Darwin collected a variety of bird specimens, but it was the finches on the
04:50Galapagos Islands that were of much interest to him. He noticed that the finches on the mainland and the
04:56islands looked the same, but the flinchers on the Galapagos Island had slightly different characteristics
05:02that helped when it came to finding food. This included things such as a different beak size and shape.
05:08Seven years after his voyage on the HMS Beagle, Darwin landed back in London. But shortly,
05:14he moved over 20 miles to the Kent countryside. Him and his family moved here to Down House.
05:26Darwin wanted to be somewhere he could focus and expand on ideas and theories.
05:31He wanted to be away from the hustle and bustle of the city, and Down House offered just that.
05:37Well, the wider estate is 35 acres, but the main garden itself is 5 acres.
05:4230 acres of the wider estate are managed wildflower meadow and woodland.
05:50It was these grounds here in Kent, and the vast amount of land around it,
05:54that became Darwin's living laboratories.
05:57Well, it's really easy to see on a day like today. It's the extraordinary beautiful Kent,
06:03well, what was then the Kent countryside. You've got the birds singing. It really is an oasis within
06:09the London area, and this really was the main attractant to Darwin. It wasn't the house itself,
06:14which he described as ugly, but it really was the physical landscape. Also, it was where the London clay
06:21met the chalk of the North Kent Downs, and this was really important to Darwin, because it meant he
06:26could do his very important botanical research, but also he could grow a viable kitchen garden to feed
06:32the family. Whether it was in the house itself, or whether it was in the physical setting of the
06:37garden, or indeed his kitchen garden, or the wider countryside, this is where Darwin tested his
06:42theories about evolution by means of natural selection. Darwin conducted hundreds of experiments at
06:47down, and many of these theories tested would be published on On the Origin of Species in 1859.
06:54Today, dotted around the garden's grounds, you can still see evidence and recreation of many
07:00of these experiments. One of these experiments was Darwin's weed gardens, or seedling mortality
07:06experiments. Darwin would clear a patch of grass and observe the survival of weeds and seedlings.
07:12He noticed that factors such as slugs, insects and weather had a massive impact on the survival of
07:18the plants. Many persisted and helped him to illustrate this universal struggle for existence,
07:24and played beautifully into his theory of natural selection.
07:28A variation on the weed garden was what Darwin called the lawn experiment,
07:32and this was conducted over three years. And what he did is he counted the number of species in the
07:36first year, then the second year, and finally the final year, and he noticed that over that time there
07:43was a reduction in species number. And he was one of the first scientists to draw a line between the
07:50action of grazing animals and biodiversity. Essentially, what he said was that in the absence of grazing,
07:57the coarser plants took over and choked out the weaker plants. Where with grazing, the animals,
08:05in this case it would have been sheep and cows, they would have created what we call a level playing field,
08:11where the coarser plants couldn't take over. As well as these weed gardens, part of Darwin's original
08:17glass house still stands. He used this to develop past theories and look into some more tropical plants,
08:23such as orchids or carnivorous plants. One of the main criticisms that Darwin's detractors levied at
08:29him was that On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, was actually too brief. So in 1862,
08:37Darwin published his work on orchids, and this was a groundbreaking book. In order to do that,
08:42he commissioned this beautiful glass house to be built, where he grew very exotic orchids, like for
08:48example, this slipper orchid. And he used the chalkland landscape around Down House to study native orchids as well.
09:00Down House was also a testament to the Darwin children's rather unconventional upbringing.
09:06Life at Down House was the antithesis of typical Victorian family life. Generally, there was a
09:11mentality that children should be seen and not heard. But the Darwin children could be seen and heard,
09:17running all through the house and gardens. Charles and Emma love their children, and it can also be
09:23seen through some adjustments made to the house itself. Shortly after moving in to Down House,
09:29one of the first things that Darwin set about doing was to extend the house. And one of the first things
09:33they did was to build a schoolroom extension. And that was to school or home tutor their growing
09:40family of kids. And the children describe an idyllic family childhood, whereby they could climb through the
09:46branches of this veteran mulberry down to the ground and into the gardens in the most easily accessible
09:52way. Much like his childhood, Darwin encouraged his children to play and experiment in the gardens.
09:58A large part of Darwin's life was spent at Down. His most iconic and important pieces of work were
10:04finalised in Kent, and his legacy is maintained well.
10:10On the 19th of April 1882, Charles Darwin passed away aged 73 at Down House.
10:17He was buried at Westminster Abbey, and after his funeral, one newspaper wrote,
10:22One could not converse with Darwin without being reminded of Socrates. There was the same desire
10:28to find someone wiser than himself, the same belief in sovereignty of reason, the same ready humour,
10:35the same sympathetic interest in all the ways and works of men.
10:39Although Darwin didn't see himself as much of a conversationalist, he did believe that he could
10:44spot things other people would miss, and that he could observe these things very carefully.
10:49This statement about himself stands true, not only in On the Origin of Species, but in some of his
10:55other works, such as a book he wrote about the fertilisation of orchids, and many of the observations
11:00he made and noted down whilst aboard the HMS Beagle. Despite travelling around the world,
11:05it's clear to see that Darwin's early life really shaped his love and curiosity for the natural world.
11:11His involvement in the garden at his childhood home on the mount, recording the height of plants,
11:16and carrying out jobs for his sisters, showed a path towards a scientific mind. His later years
11:22residing in Kent show that early involvement shaped a brilliant, inquisitive and scientific mind,
11:28not only in himself, but also encouraged in his children. By the time of his death in 1882,
11:35Darwin had written a total of 20 books. His theories and works changed the world of science forever.
11:42The life and story of Charles Darwin is honoured well, both in Shrewsbury and here in Kent.
11:48This is the life, legacy and story of Charles Darwin.
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