SHANKLIN, a village and a parish in the S E of the Isle of Wight. The village stands in a vale, about 300 feet above sea-level, near the coast and near the Isle of Wight railway, 8 miles S by W of Ryde; was known, at Domesday, as Senchiz; was, till recently, a very lovely collection of retired cottages; is now a fashionable watering-place, with shops, villas, and terraces; enjoys a remarkably mild climate and very picturesque environs; and has a head post-office, ‡ designated Shanklin, Isle of Wight, a r. station with telegraph, three good hotels, numerous lodging-houses, news-rooms, two churches, Independent and -Bible Christian chapels, and a national school. The old church is partly of the 12^th century; and includes transepts, erected in 1859. The new church was built in 1868. The parish comprises 672 acres of land, and 130 of water. Real property, £3, 335. Pop. in 1851, 355; in 1861, 479. Houses, 96. The manor belonged, at Domesday, to Gosselin Fitz-Azor; and passed to the family of De Lisle. The manor-house stands to the N E of the church, and is a heavy-corniced and high-peaked building of the early part oflast century. The cottage inhabited by the authoress known as Home Lee is not far from the manor-house. S.down flanks the S side of the village vale; has often been asserted to be a growing-hill, as to both height and bulk; and is alleged to have attained an increased height of at least 100 feet since the former part of last century. S. chine flanks the shore immediately E of the village; is a romantic chasm, about 180 feet wide and 270 feet deep at the mouth, and about ½ a mile long; has rocky ledgy sides, covered with brushwood; and is traversed by a streamlet, wild and frolicsome, and making a fall ofabout 30 feet. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Winchester. Value, £47.* Patron, F. W. Popham, Esq.

(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))