Shide is a small settlement on the Isle of Wight

Isle of Wight

The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...

, some of which is considered to be in the Newport

Newport, Isle of Wight

Newport is a civil parish and a county town of the Isle of Wight, an island off the south coast of England. Newport has a population of 23,957 according to the 2001 census...

 conurbation. Shide Hill House which is the white house near the top of St. George's Lane was the retirement home of Professor John Milne

John Milne

For other uses, see John Milne .John Milne was the British geologist and mining engineer who worked on a horizontal seismograph.-Biography:...

 (1850-1913), inventor of the horizontal pendulum

Pendulum

A pendulum is a weight suspended from a pivot so that it can swing freely. When a pendulum is displaced from its resting equilibrium position, it is subject to a restoring force due to gravity that will accelerate it back toward the equilibrium position...

 seismograph after he retired from the Imperial College of Engineering

Imperial College of Engineering

The Imperial College of Engineering was founded as a university at Tokyo in 1873, though its predecessor the existed from 1871. The name "Kobu Daigakko" dates from 1877. In modern-day parlance it would have been called an institute of technology....

 in Tokyo, Japan. The Isle of Wight County Cricket Ground is just south of Shide.

There is a cycleway between Shide and Merstone

Merstone, Isle of Wight

Merstone is a quaint little hamlet on the Isle of Wight. It is home to Merston Manor, built in 1605 in the Jacobean style by Edward Cheeke, and rebuilt in the Victorian era. Merston Manor was first mentioned in the Domesday Book, and the present structure is arguably the oldest brick house on the...

, and public transport is provided by Southern Vectis

Southern Vectis

The Southern Vectis Omnibus Company Limited is the dominant bus operator on the Isle of Wight. It was purchased by the Go-Ahead Group in 2005 and is a part of the company's Go South Coast division. The firm employs 299 staff, with 105 single deck, double deck and open-top buses and coaches...

 buses on route 2

Southern Vectis route 2

Southern Vectis route 2 is a bus service operated on the Isle of Wight by Southern Vectis between Newport and Ryde via Merstone, Godshill, Shanklin, Sandown and Brading. The general daytime frequency of the route is every half-hour each direction, although in the evenings and on Sundays fewer buses...

, route 3

Southern Vectis route 3

Southern Vectis route 3 is a bus service operated on the Isle of Wight by Southern Vectis between Newport, Ventnor and Ryde. It also runs via Rookley, Godshill and Brading. The general daytime frequency of the route is every half-hour each direction, although in the evenings and on Sundays fewer...

 and local route 38.

Shide railway station

Shide (Isle of Wight) railway station

Shide railway station, was an intermediate station at Shide on the southern fringes of Newport situated near Shide Chalk Pits on the line from Newport to Sandown incorporated by the Isle of Wight and Newport Junction Railway in 1868 , opened in 1875 and closed 81 years later...

 was opened in 1875 and closed in 1956.

Shide Quarry

Shide Quarry, located to the east of the village was quarried for chalk during the first half of 20th Century. The prominent west-facing slope is a major landmark on Newport’s skyline. The site is now a Site of Special Scientific Interest

Site of Special Scientific Interest

A Site of Special Scientific Interest is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom. SSSIs are the basic building block of site-based nature conservation legislation and most other legal nature/geological conservation designations in Great Britain are based upon...

 (SSSI) and Local Nature Reserve owned by the Isle of Wight Council

Isle of Wight Council

The Isle of Wight Council is a local council. It is a unitary authority covering the Isle of Wight, South East England. It is currently made up of 40 seats, with the Conservatives as ruling party with 24 councillors at the latest local election in June 2009....

. It is open to the public. The site was notified in 1971 for its biological features which show all stages of succession from bare chalk

Chalk

Chalk is a soft, white, porous sedimentary rock, a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite. Calcite is calcium carbonate or CaCO3. It forms under reasonably deep marine conditions from the gradual accumulation of minute calcite plates shed from micro-organisms called coccolithophores....

 rock to Ash

Ash tree

Fraxinus is a genus flowering plants in the olive and lilac family, Oleaceae. It contains 45-65 species of usually medium to large trees, mostly deciduous though a few subtropical species are evergreen. The tree's common English name, ash, goes back to the Old English æsc, while the generic name...

 woodland. It is one of 41 SSSIs on the Isle of Wight.

External links

• My Visit to the Isle of Wight, Brian J. Mitchell, including a description of plaque honoring John Milne and photograph of monument.