Freshwater is a large village and civil parish[3][4] at the western end of the Isle of Wight, England.

The southern, coastal part of the village is Freshwater Bay, named for the adjacent small cove.

It was the birthplace of physicist Robert Hooke and was the home of Poet Laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson.

[9][10] Immediately behind Mermaid Rock lies a small sea cave that cuts several metres into the new cliff.

Frequent repair work and repainting are undertaken on the building's seafront exterior walls, due to strong storms which often batter rocks, and other debris, against it.

Fort Redoubt was built in 1855–1856 to protect Freshwater Bay and was in use until the early 20th century; it was sold by the military in 1928.

Two unusual structures that have been described as ice houses, pottery kilns or crematoria are found on Moons Hill in Freshwater.

British Poet laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson lived at nearby Farringford House (on the road between Freshwater and Alum Bay).

[30] He found that there were too many starstruck tourists who pestered him in Farringford, so he moved to Aldworth, a stately home on Blackdown hill between Lurgashall and Fernhurst, about 1+1⁄4 miles (2.0 km) south of Haslemere in West Sussex in 1869.

Pioneering photographer Julia Margaret Cameron lived in Freshwater at Dimbola Lodge from 1860 to 1875.

Gertrude Fenton, the novelist and editor of The Carisbrooke Magazine, lived at Lacey's Farm, Freshwater in the early 1880s.

[31] Freshwater was also the birthplace of Sir Vivian Ernest Fuchs (11 February 1908 – 11 November 1999), an English explorer and Fellow of the Royal Society, whose expeditionary team completed the first overland crossing of Antarctica in 1958.

They hold bi-monthly meetings at the Island Planetarium at Fort Victoria, a yearly Memorial Luncheon on 3 March on the date of his death and week-long celebrations of his birthday, 18 July.

[37][38] The Freshwater Parish originally was composed of five farms, known as "tuns": Norton, Sutton, Easton, Weston and Middleton.

In the Summer, open-top bus "The Needles Tour" and tourist service "Island Coaster" serve Freshwater Bay.

Due to low usage, especially outside the holiday season after the war, the line closed in 1953, ten years before the Beeching cuts were published.