Bonchurch
A secluded Undercliff village of Victorian villas, ancient churches, and subtropical gardens beneath St Boniface Down.
Bonchurch lies in the Undercliff east of Ventnor, a village built on the great landslip shelf that runs along the south-eastern coast of the Isle of Wight. The setting is extraordinary: steep wooded slopes rise behind the village towards the summit of St Boniface Down, while ahead the land drops away to a rocky foreshore and the open Channel. The sheltered position creates a mild microclimate where palms, holm oaks, and Mediterranean plants flourish alongside native species, giving the village an almost subtropical feel.
The Old Church of St Boniface is the village's most treasured building. Dating from the 11th century, possibly earlier, it is one of the smallest and oldest churches on the island. The tiny nave measures barely thirty feet, and the interior retains a Norman chancel arch and fragments of medieval wall painting. The church sits in a circular churchyard that may indicate a pre-Norman foundation, and it is surrounded by mature trees that all but hide it from the road. A newer parish church, also dedicated to St Boniface, was built uphill in the 1840s to serve the growing population, but the old church continues to hold occasional services.
Charles Dickens stayed in Bonchurch in the summer of 1849, renting Winterbourne House while working on David Copperfield. He found the Undercliff scenery magnificent but the damp air debilitating, writing to friends that the place was making him ill. Algernon Swinburne, the Victorian poet, grew up at East Dene in the village and is buried in the new churchyard. The literary connections are genuine rather than manufactured, and the houses associated with both men survive.
Bonchurch Pond, a small ornamental pool fed by a spring, sits at the centre of the village and is a popular stopping point. Surrounded by trees and overlooked by Victorian villas, it has a secluded, almost enchanted quality. Ducks and moorhens inhabit the pond, and benches around its edge invite a rest. The pond was created in the 19th century but the spring that feeds it has been flowing for centuries.
The village developed largely in the Victorian period, when the Undercliff coast became fashionable for health and retirement. Substantial stone villas and terraced gardens were built on the slopes, many of them now listed. The architecture is predominantly local stone with slate roofs, though some later houses use brick. Narrow lanes wind between high walls draped in ivy and valerian, and the overall effect is of a village that has been gently absorbed by its landscape.
Walking is the natural way to explore Bonchurch. The coastal path passes through on its way between Ventnor and Shanklin, and the Landslip walk through the wooded Undercliff to the east is one of the island's classic routes. The path passes through a tunnel of overhanging trees, with ferns and mosses coating the fallen blocks of chalk and greensand. It is atmospheric in all seasons but particularly striking in spring, when bluebells carpet the woodland floor.
Bonchurch has no shops or pubs of its own, relying on neighbouring Ventnor for services. This absence of commerce contributes to its tranquillity. It is a residential village, predominantly, where the principal sounds are birdsong, running water, and the distant wash of the sea on the rocks below.
Notable features
- 11th-century Old Church of St Boniface
- Dickens wrote David Copperfield while staying here in 1849
- Bonchurch Pond and the Landslip coastal walk