St. Catherine's Down is a
chalk
Chalk is a soft, white, porous, sedimentary carbonate rock. It is a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite and originally formed deep under the sea by the compression of microscopic plankton that had settled to the sea floor. Ch ...
down on the
Isle of Wight
The Isle of Wight (Help:IPA/English, /waɪt/ Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''WYTE'') is an island off the south coast of England which, together with its surrounding uninhabited islets and Skerry, skerries, is also a ceremonial county. T ...
,
[ National Trust]
/ref> located near St Catherine's Point
St Catherine's Point is the southernmost point on the Isle of Wight. It is close to the village of Niton and the point where the Back of the Wight changes to the Undercliff of Ventnor.
On nearby St Catherine's Down is St Catherine's Orator ...
, the southernmost point on the island. The Down rises to 240 metres at its highest point, between the towns of Niton and Chale. Upon the hill is St. Catherine's Oratory
St. Catherine's Oratory is a medieval lighthouse on St. Catherine's Down, above the southern coast of the Isle of Wight. It was built by Lord of Chale Walter de Godeton (sometimes spelled "Goditon") as an act of penance for plundering wine from ...
(known locally as "the pepperpot"), which is a stone lighthouse built in the 14th century by Walter De Godeton. It is the second oldest, and only surviving, medieval lighthouse in the British Islands: only the Roman lighthouse at Dover
Dover ( ) is a town and major ferry port in Kent, southeast England. It faces France across the Strait of Dover, the narrowest part of the English Channel at from Cap Gris Nez in France. It lies southeast of Canterbury and east of Maidstone. ...
is older.
Reportedly, de Godeton was found guilty for having plundered wine that belonged to the Church from the shipwreck of the St. Marie of Bayonne in Chale Bay. He was ordered to make amends, under threat of excommunication, by building and maintaining the lighthouse. It was completed after his death, and staffed by a priest; fires were lit in the tower to warn ships of the coast. There was originally a chapel attached, which has since been demolished. A Bronze Age
The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...
barrow near the Oratory was excavated in the 1920s.
A replacement lighthouse was begun in 1785 but was never completed because the Down is prone to dense fog. Locally, the surviving foundations are known as the "salt cellar". After the wreck of the ''Clarendon'' in 1837, a new lighthouse, St Catherine's Lighthouse, was built to the west of Niton at the foot of the Undercliff.
The River Medina, the main river of the Isle of Wight, rises at St Catherine's Down and flows northwards through the county town Newport, towards the Solent at Cowes.
Hoy monument
The northern end of St. Catherine's Down carries the Hoy Monument.The Hoy Monument
/ref> This was created in 1814 by Russian merchant Michael Hoy (1758–1828), whose wealth came from trade with Britain, to commemorate the visit of the Russian Tsar to Great Britain,Crimean War
The Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Kingdom of Sardinia (1720–1861), Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont fro ...
in 1857.
See also
* List of hills of the Isle of Wight
Further reading
*
References
Headlands of the Isle of Wight
Hills of the Isle of Wight
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