Bouldnor

Bouldnor is a hamlet near Yarmouth on the west coast of the Isle of Wight in southern England. It is the location of Bouldnor Battery, a gun battery emplacement.

Bouldnor
Port La Salle, Bouldnor
Bouldnor Location within the Isle of Wight
OS grid reference	SZ3789
Shire county	Isle of Wight
Region	South East
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	Yarmouth
Postcode district	PO41
Police	Hampshire
Fire	Isle of Wight
Ambulance	Isle of Wight

View west from the edge of Bouldnor Copse, above Bouldnor Cliff. In the distance is Yarmouth with its pier, and in the very far distance, Hurst Castle.

Bouldnor is located on the A3054 road, and public transport is provided by buses on Southern Vectis route 7.

A soapbox derby was held in Bouldnor in 2005. It was a big success, so the event was repeated in 2006, though moved to Newport and renamed the Isle of Wight Soapbox Derby Challenge.[1]

The Bouldnor Cliff Mesolithic Village seaport

The beach at Bouldnor

The Bouldnor Cliff Mesolithic Village is an internationally important archaeological site underwater off the coast of the Bouldnor Cliffs. Mesolithic flints and other items have been found. This material dates from 8000 years ago.[2] During the Neolithic, this was a seaport that supported trade with the Middle East (as wheat was present here 8,000 years ago, hundreds of years before wheat was grown anywhere in Europe).[3] Bronze Age Britain had large reserves of tin in the areas of Cornwall and Devon. Mining in Cornwall and Devon was then of global importance. Tin is necessary to smelt bronze. At that time the sea level was much lower and carts of tin were brought across the Solent at low tide[4][5] for export from Bouldnor, possibly on the Ferriby Boats and later on the Blackfriars Ships.

References

1. "May Date for Island's Soapbox Derby" Archived 2017-12-26 at the Wayback Machine, Isle of Wight County Press, Tuesday, April 18, 2006
2. Eleanor Williams (8 August 2007). "Fight on to save Stone Age Atlantis". BBC News. Retrieved 6 September 2007.
3. Balter, Michael. "DNA recovered from underwater British site may rewrite history of farming in Europe". Science. Retrieved 16 March 2015.
4. Adams, William Henry Davenport (1877). Nelsons' hand-book to the Isle of Wight. Oxford University. Retrieved 16 March 2015. Cotentin Peninsula trade Isle of Wight.
5. Hawkes, C.F.C (July 1984). "ICTIS Disentangled, and the British Tin Trade". Oxford Journal of Archaeology. 3 (2): 211–233. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0092.1984.tb00327.x. Retrieved 16 March 2015.