The walk uncovers some of the hidden gems connected with his life and starts in Shanklin. He had taken lodgings there on his search for a holiday residence and it was from where he sent an urgent letter to his wife Catherine back in London, telling her he had found the perfect place to stay.
Words spoken by Gerald Dickens
At the top of Shanklin Down, one can see the whole Island from East to West. To the north is Portsmouth - the city of his birth in 1812. In 1838, Dickens and his wife stayed in Alum Bay for a few days before moving to Ventnor. And in 1849, he walked many of these Downs and explored much of the Island including visits to Blackgang, Ryde and Cowes. Some walks involved family and friends and included great picnics. One such event was captured by cartoonist John Leech, in which the party had an unwelcome visitor, as depicted in the ‘Awful appearance of a ‘wopps’ at a picnic. The location is believed to be at Cooks Castle, close to the top of Shanklin Down with views to Appuldurcombe House.
Words spoken by Mark Dickens
The walk follows the Downs along the top of St. Boniface then down towards the cemetery at Ventnor, where you can see the graves of Charles and Margaret Dick in the top left hand corner. Both are believed to have influenced characters in both David Copperfield and Great Expectations. The walk passes the Royal Hotel in Ventnor, where Dickens and his wife stayed in 1838. Perhaps their stay here was because the year before, Queen Victoria’s new Physician Sir James Clark had recognised the location as an excellent place to recuperate from chest complaints. Dickens had suffered from Asthma as a child and his health was often affected throughout his life. At sea level, it’s a pleasant walk along the coast to Bonchurch. The site of the shower bath mentioned in his letter can be seen on the foreshore - the waterfall was routed from the cliff through a channel to fall inside a contraption similar to a Victorian bathing machine. Heading up the cliffs in to Bonchurch village, the footpath passes over the fast flowing stream that still flows from the grounds of Winterbourne House. This was the home where the Dickens family resided for their summer and where chapters of David Copperfield were written. On Bonchurch Shute, you’ll pass Hillside Cottage - where John Leech and family were also holidaying. His iconic illustrations for A Christmas Carol are known the world over. He also produced an illustration for Punch magazine, showing Dickens in his shower bath. It appeared in an early 1849 September edition entitled “Domestic Bliss”.
Words spoken by Ian Dickens
m, London Courtesy of Charles Dickens Museu
This walking trail was created in 2024 as a tribute to Charles Dickens. The year marked the 175th anniversary of his last visit to the Isle of Wight, when he and his family spent three months across the summer of 1849 on the Island.
Charles Dickens brought to life a view of humankind and the societal circumstances that surrounded it during the Victorian period. Indeed, the term Dickensian and Victorian are still used to describe aspects of society. Dickens wrote 15 novels, five novellas and hundreds of short stories. He also wrote over 14,000 letters and many can be viewed online. All of his novels were written in instalments, published in a series of periodicals and were enjoyed like we might enjoy a soap opera now. Readers were often left on a ‘cliff hanger’ and couldn’t wait to pick up the story in the next edition. Each edition contained around 32 pages covering three or four chapters and when the story was complete, the full novel was published in book form. While on the Isle of Wight, Dickens wrote chapters 7 to 18 of David Copperfield. The novel is hugely autobiographical as it features many aspects of his own life, particularly from his childhood. Having been forced in to child labour after his parents were sent to debtors prison, Dickens worked in Warrens Blacking Factory, sticking labels on to bottles of liquid shoe polish. He had kept this period of his life a secret and writing about it was very hard for him. So perhaps it was no surprise to read that he described it as his Words spoken by Harry Whinney favourite novel. And others, including Leo Tolstoy, agreed.
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Words spoken by Ollie Dickens
Isle of Wight visits
Dickens was born across the Solent in Portsmouth on February 7th, 1812. His father John worked in the Pay Office at the Naval dockyard and many of his earliest memories would have been linked to the sea. He married Catherine Hogarth in 1836 and they went on to have ten children in total. They first visited the Isle of Wight two years later, staying at The Grove Needles Hotel in Alum Bay from 3rd-8th September. They spent a further two days in Ventnor staying at the Ventnor Hotel - now known as the Royal Hotel. His first novel - The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club was becoming a publishing phenomenon and he was already hard at work on the opening instalments of Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby. Queen Victoria was an early fan, writing enthusiastically as a teenager about this exciting new writer. When Oliver Twist was published, her Prime Minister warned her not to read it as he thought she would find the content too shocking. But the young Queen ignored him and declared she found the novel ‘excessively interesting’. Dickens was highlighting the huge social injustices of the time and wrote so powerfully, those in power listened and were moved by what they read. By 1849, Dickens had become something of a global superstar and he needed to find somewhere where he could balance the need for privacy, find inspiration and also entertain as the Dickens young enjoyed their summer holiday. With Queen Victoria and Prince Albert establishing Osborne House as a favoured residence, it was no surprise that the great and good of the age also Queen Victoria and Prince Albert flocked to the Isle of Wight. Many contemporaries of Dickens came including Alfred Lord Tennyson (God father to Dickens’ sixth child, also named Alfred), Thomas Carlyle, William Makepeace Thackeray, artists John Leech, Frank Stone, Augustus Egg and Hablot Knight Browne (who provided the illustrations for David Copperfield). Mark Lemon - editor of Punch magazine - and John Forster, perhaps Dickens’ closest friend - were also here, making the Island a veritable ‘Who’s who’ of household names from the period. While on the Island, Dickens (without his familiar beard) would take a sea swim in the morning, then shower in his specially constructed perpetual shower bath, before walking (Cont.)
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All the quotes accessible via the QR codes have been read by descendants of Charles and Catherine Dickens.
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The Charles Dickens Trail
Prolific writer