Blackgang

Coordinates: 50°35′N 1°19′W / 50.59°N 1.31°W / 50.59; -1.31

Blackgang is a village on the south-western coast of the Isle of Wight. It is best known as the location of the Blackgang Chine amusement park which sits to the south of St Catherine's Down.

Blackgang forms the west end of the Ventnor Undercliff region, which extends for 12 kilometres from Blackgang to Luccombe, also encompassing the town of Ventnor and the villages of Bonchurch, St Lawrence, and Niton. It also marks the edge of the Back of the Wight.

History

Historically, Blackgang was a hamlet that expanded into a small village in the mid 19th century, partly out of a Victorian fashion for speculative building of marine villas, and partly in association with the establishment of the amusement park at the chine, the large coastal ravine (historically known for being a haunt of smugglers) after which the park was named. The nearby Sandrock Spring, a chalybeate spring discovered in 1811, was another visitor attraction.

The majority of Blackgang's Victorian coastal development, along with the chine itself, was obliterated by landslides and coastal erosion over the 20th century, part of a general pattern of erosion affecting the Undercliff area. A major landslide severed the old road between Blackgang and Niton in 1928, and subsequent ones destroyed most of the remaining road segment and adjoining houses, as well as the Sandrock Spring in 1978. Currently Blackgang comprises the amusement park (whose buildings incorporate some of the village's former residential houses such as the Blackgang Hotel and Five Rocks), a tearoom, and a few other houses.