The Sand Path at Darwin's Home
A Sacred Site of the Epic of Evolution

Darwin's home, where he wrote On the Origin of Species.

The home of Charles Darwin, "Down House," is located near the village of Downe (different spelling) in the Sussex Region of England. It was here that he wrote his most significant works. The house interior has been restored to the way it would have looked when Darwin lived there, and his collection of pinned insects is gloriously on display. On the grounds you can stroll by the site where he conducted his earthworm experiment, thereby learning how great are the earth-moving abilities of this under-celebrated creature.

When three of us (Connie Barlow, Tyler Volk, and Michael Rampino) went on an evolutionary pilgrimage to Down House in the 1990s, we chose to walk the Sand Path in the manner that Darwin himself walked it: contemplatively. Walking this path, day by day, is how Darwin arrived at his best ideas. So each of us called to mind a scientific question yet unanswered and walked the path with that question in mind. For me, Connie, it was a delight to come upon a region of the path that was bounded by what was surely an "entangled bank" — which is one of Darwin's most memorable metaphors for the workings of the natural world.

Connie Barlow and Tyler Volk walking the Sand Path


Richard Fortey, in his acclaimed 1998 book, Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth, wrote this of Down House:

It is still possible to retrace Darwin's steps at Down. It is not a grand place, no stately home, but a cuontry squire's house, and it breathes comfort. The furniture is just a little worn. You feel that Charles Darwin had something more important on his mind than a slightly frayed carpet. There are notebooks and writing implements on display, but they do not have quite the formality of many of those laid out in other studies of great men.

I found myself staring intently at these everyday objects as if they might somehow hold the key to his extraordinary insights. They offer no clue, of course. But you can readily imagine Down as a family home of one of the few intellectual giants who was also beloved by his family and intimates.

The Sand Walk was made around the perimeter of a copse at the end of the garden, a place for a modest constitutional, where ideas could be mulled over and phrases polished for the press. The domestic scale of some of his researches is something the visitor might not be prepared for. In the hedgerows in the lanes round about there still twine white bryony and honey-suckle, the raw material for his essay upon "The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants." Orchids still grow on a nearby chalky slope, much as they did in Darwin's time, and there he could observe the bee orchid for himself. His investigation on the importance of worms was also conducted on the premises. [p. 236]


  • RETURN to the main page of SACRED SITES OF THE EPIC OF EVOLUTION

    • Home  |  About The Great Story  |  About Us  |  Traveling Ministry and Events
    What Others Say  |      Programs and Presentations  |  Metareligious Essays  |  Writings/Rituals
    Great Story Beads  |      Online Bookstore  |  Parables  |  Sacred Sites
     Highlights of Our Travels | Favorite Links & Resources  |  Join Us! | WHAT's NEW?