{"id":819665,"date":"2026-10-31T10:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T10:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/819665\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T10:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T10:50:09","slug":"secret-dorset-pulling-alfred-russel-wallace-from-darwins-shadow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/819665\/","title":{"rendered":"Secret Dorset: Pulling Alfred Russel Wallace from Darwin&#8217;s shadow"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">As he approached his 60s, he settled down in England, building Nutwood Cottage in Godalming, Surrey, but &#8220;more and more houses kept on being built around him&#8221;, said Beccaloni. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;He hated that, he wanted to get away from people, so he thought Dorset would be a good area and he found a fairly isolated house called Corfe View in Parkstone, Poole. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;He lived there for several years and more houses got built around him there. So, he looked for a patch of land where he could build a house and found one in Broadstone.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It was 1901 and Wallace was thrilled with his find. In correspondence, he wrote: &#8220;It is almost perfection. It is on the slope of the Broadstone middle plateau, looking south over Poole Harbour with the Purbeck Hills beyond.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The house he had built was called Old Orchard. It was bulldozed in 1964 but remnants of Wallace survive. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I live in what is now Wallace Road,&#8221; said local historian Jill Floyd. &#8220;Probably 100 yards away from where his house was. There are relics of his garden, people have some rather exotic plants in their gardens.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Parkstone property no longer survives either. which means the best memento of Wallace in Dorset today is his grave. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It was renovated by Beccaloni&#8217;s Wallace Memorial Fund at the turn of the century.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;He was very famous in his lifetime but was forgotten after his death,&#8221; said the science historian, adding: &#8220;Darwin&#8217;s buried in Westminster Abbey and here&#8217;s Wallace&#8217;s grave being totally neglected.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As he approached his 60s, he settled down in England, building Nutwood Cottage in Godalming, Surrey, but &#8220;more&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":819666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-819665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-gb","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}