From: Darwin, Desmond & Moore 1991

This is the birth house of Darwin, The Mount. His father Robert was a greatly respected physician and his mother Susannah was a Wedgwood (from the famous pottery). There were close family relations between the Darwins and the Wedgwoods: many mutual marriages were contracted. Darwin's mother died when he was only 9 years old and after that he was mothered firmly by his sisters Caroline and Susan. From his tenth on he visited a boarding school in Shrewsbury, where he didn't do very well because he was not interested in the subject matter.

This is how The Mount looks nowadays. It has become a council tax office. We have rung the bell and asked if we were allowed to see Darwin's birth room. That was OK, but it did not take us very long. The wallpaper was about the same as the original one, as we were told, and in the corridor a family tree hung on the wall. That was it. The birth room is the room above the entrance. We couldn't find many other traces of Darwin's life in Shrewsbury but in the museum in his old school is a statue of  this important citizen. And we have found a shopping centre bearing his name.

Darwin 2

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