7Mar2009: Day 285: Charles Darwin's House and Scotney Castle

Today we went to Darwin's house, or Downs House. It is well off the beaten path, but we found it after at first thinking the GPS took us somewhere wrong. It was interesting to see the home of the man who single handedly changed the thinking of the masses to think that creationism is not true. Now I'm not completely sure there isn't something with what Darwin's theories point out, but i certainly think that if it does work that way it clearly shows intelligent design and certainly within the realm of what God could have created with or without what He reveals in the Bible. I don't profess to know what the Garden of Eden really was or how long a day was without the Sun in the sky while God took 4"days" to get around to making it. But, God used a man, Moses, to give us these words in the Bible to help us understand that He did create us, whether we want to believe that or not, or even if we want to believe that He created us in a single moment or there was some process by which He created us, He still created us. So, in the end, I guess we will meet Adam and Eve in heaven, and perhaps we will have to tip our halo's to good ol' Charlie if it turns out that they are actually monkey-people or lung fish.

Anyway, we walked around the upstairs where we found out about Darwin's parents and his privileged lifestyle funded by his father's wealth. Darwin took a five year trip around the world studying life in its various forms all across the globe. When he returned he married his first cousin and settled down in Downs House, which his father bought for him. He was never any good at school, initially he was going to be a Doctor like his father, but when he failed at that, he started to study to be a Clergymen in the Church of England. He left the thought of that profession behind as well sometime during his trip around the world. He just wanted to study the natural world and his father's wealth allowed him to do it.

His main focus for 8 years of his life was barnacles and he set out to classify the barnacle species in full. Then he studied pigeons with the intent to prove his theory that every pigeon had a common ancestor, the stone pigeon. During this study he saw that different pigeons had different beaks for the food that they eat and the environment they lived in. Through this discovery he eventually develops his theory of a common ancestor for all life and eventually came to write it into the his world changing book: the Origins of the Species. Actually, it only took him one year for him to write his book because he found out that another person was doing the same research in Asia when he receive a letter asking to collaborate from the other person. He immediately began work on the book and published it, the initial release selling out of all copies in one day. The other scientist was actually quite cordial with Darwin even after he beat him to the publishers and they became life long correspondents.

Makenna was a pest all day. Ignoring our requests to stay with us when we did let her walk. She fell at one point and gave herself a good scrape by her eye and on her back. She just likes running and no attempts to tell her not to works. She'll learn eventually, hopefully before she gives me a heart attack. I ended up having her on my shoulders most of the day and there is not much she can do to get down from there other than slap me, mess up my hair, stick her wet finger in my ear, or lean way over the side of my face and look me right in the eye and say "Stuck! Stuck!". That's right yer stuck, you little pest!

So we left there and went to Scotney Castle. This is actually a Sandstone Manor house owned by the family through until 1999, when the property was left to the public. It is quite a nice home with most of the fixtures dating to the mid-1950's, and furniture a far cry older than that. There wasn't really any good descriptions of the rooms or the items in them, you just really wandered. I suppose you could have asked questions of the stewards that were there, but I didn't really think there was all that much history in the place. It was built in the 1820's so it really wasn't that old. It was always in the one family. There is a Castle ruin on site with a very picturesque moat and garden around and within it. It has one tower and a small building that still survives, but we were not allowed within it, which was disappointing. Also, there was no history of the castle anywhere that I could find while we were there. I probably could find stuff online, but perhaps Teri will fill in some of that for you.
We went up to Costco after Scotney Castle and bought some meats and various cleaning products. Makenna was all fired up to get pizza and a drink with a straw in it and when we got here that, she didn't want it really. So we packed it all up and went home.