More information : (SJ 4854 1306) The Mount (NAT). (1)
The Mount; Late Georgian red brick house with five bays and two and a half storeys. It has two lower wings which differ in length and height. The left one has four bays and is one storey. The building also has a deep Tuscan porch. It is the birth place of Charles Darwin. (2)
(SJ 48541306) The Mount; 19th century; two and a half storey, red
brick building. The birth place of Charles Darwin. (3)
"The Mount. Charles Darwin was born here 12 Feb 1809" (Plate at entrance to drive). Large town house, now local government
offices in good condition. (4)
The Mount, house now used as offices. Built circa 1800 it is a three storey brick built house with stone dressings. It has a five-window range to the main part of the house and lower flanking wings. The central entranceway porch has Tuscan columns supporting an entablature with triglyph frieze. It has twelve-pane sash windows with flat-arched brick heads. The first floor has a continuous sill band. The building has a stone cornice and parapet. There is a single-storey four-window range to the left of the main building and a two-storey single-window range to the right. The interior of the building has elaborate plasterwork decoration and a cantilevered stone stair with cast-iron balusters. (5)
The Mount was built by Dr Robert Darwin in the 1790s and it has survived largely untouched to the present day. Home to Charles Darwin during his school and college days there are still reminders of his early life including his father's surgery, 'thinking path' and outhouse laboratory. Details of the house are known from the description when it was put up for auction. The house included: a dining room, drawing room, morning room, conservatory, library, 14 bedrooms with dressing rooms, kitchens, offices, cellars, stabling and coach houses. (6)
These sources date the construction of The Mount to about 1800. For a detailed description of the assets of the Darwin estate at the 1866 auction please refer to these sources, especially the article titled: The Darwin Garden Research Project -The Sale of The Mount in 1866. (7-8)
National Grid Reference SJ4853113073 (centroid of the object) identified by digital ordnance survey mapping. (9)
The Mount was apparently owned by several private owners between 1867 and 1922 when that part which the Valuation Office now occupies was sold to the Postmaster General for North Wales District of the Post Office Engineering Department. In 1963, the Post Office sold it to the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works when it was assigned to the Inland Revenue Local Valuation Office. (10)
The Mount, off the Mount in Frankwell is a plain but elegant late Georgian house. Built in the late 1790s it is the birth place of Charles Darwin. The source includes a photograph of the house. (11)
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