dimbola

Site Design and Admin by: Mike

Dimbola Lodge (Freshwater I.O.W)

Dimbola Lodge was the former home of Julia Margaret Cameron.(The greatest pictorial photographer of the 19th Century)

It is now a Photgraphic Museum dedicated to her

and contains a lot of her work along with photgraphs from many leading Photographers.

Below is a breif history about her.

Julia Margaret Cameron, was born in Calcutta on June 15th 1815. Educated in Europe, she returned to Calcutta to marry Charles Hay Cameron, and to help him to England, where Julia became part of the artistic community based around her sister's home, Little Holland House, Kensington. Other prime movers included the poet Henry Taylor and the painter G. F. Watts, and guests included the Pre-Raphaelites, Thomas Carlyle and Alfred Lord Tennyson.

Julia became a close friend of the Tennysons, often visiting them at Farringford, and in 1860 bought two adjacent cottages in Terrace Lane, Freshwater Bay from Jacob Long, a local fisherman. She linked these together with a central tower - in the fashionable "Gothic" style - and named the new building Dimbola, after the family tea estates in Sri Lanka.

After her death the house was split up, one half becoming a private residence the other half was holiday flats.

The margret cameron trust managed to obtain one half of the property and Cameron House was snatched, in 1991, from the grasp of developers and again paired with Dimbola.

The main areas of paranormal activity are in the corridors and lofts upstairs, in particular the corridor through the Olympus gallery, the loft above which once served as servants' quarters (there have been sightings both of Julia Margaret Cameron and of a maid in grey) and in the corridor leading to what is now the warden's flat but was earlier Julia Margaret Camerons bedroom. Photographic fluid has been smelt when there is no-one there. The fisherman Jacob Long has also been linked to haunting this property and much more.

H.S.C Members attending: Mike,Hayley,Anne,Julie

By Mike