Shide, Isle of Wight

Shide Hill House, which was demolished in the 1970s, was situated with its back towards St. George's Lane and Pan Chalk Pit with the reception rooms looking westwards across the Blackwater Road, river and railway to the open fields on the other side of the valley.

It was the home and workplace of John Milne (1850–1913), inventor of the horizontal pendulum seismograph after he retired from the Imperial College of Engineering in Tokyo, Japan.

The Observatory, housed in the stable block, was dismantled and moved to Oxford in 1919 when Tone Milne returned to Japan and the estate was sold for development.

There is a cycleway between Shide and Merstone, and public transport is provided by Southern Vectis buses on route 2, 3 and 38.

The site was notified in 1971 for its biological features which show all stages of succession from bare chalk rock to Ash woodland.