The Needles Isle of Wight
The Needles are a row of three stacks of chalk that rise about 30 metres out of the sea off the western extremity of the Isle of Wight in the English Channel, United Kingdom, close to Alum Bay and Scratchell's Bay, and part of Totland, the westernmost civil parish of the Isle of Wight. The Needles Lighthouse stands at the outer, western end of the formation. Built in 1859, it has been automated since 1994. The waters and adjoining seabed form part of the Needles Marine Conservation Zone and the Needles along with the shore and heath above are part of the Headon Warren and West High Down Site of Special Scientific Interest.
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The formation takes its name from a fourth needle-shaped pillar called Lot's wife, which collapsed in a storm in 1764. The remaining rocks are not at all needle-like, but the name has stuck.
The Needles were featured on the BBC Two TV programme Seven Natural Wonders (2005) as one of the wonders of Southern England.
During Storm Eunice on 18 February 2022, the highest recorded wind gust in England was provisionally recorded at The Needles, at 122 miles per hour (196 km/h).
LB&SCR H2 class 4-4-2 no. 423 (later no. B423 and 2423) was named The Needles after this landmark.
The Needles' pointed shape is a result of their unusual geology. The strata have been so heavily folded during the Alpine Orogeny that the chalk is near vertical. This chalk outcrop runs through the centre of the Island from Culver Cliff in the east to the Needles in the west, and then continues under the sea to the Isle of Purbeck, forming Ballard Cliff (near Swanage), Lulworth Cove and Durdle Door. At Old Harry Rocks (east of Studland and north of Swanage) these strata lines moving from horizontal to near vertical can be seen from the sea.
The shape of the lost Lot's Wife stone column, recorded as collapsing in 1764, is subject to some speculation. A drawing of The Needles by Dutch landscape artist Lambert Doomer (1624–1700), made in 1646, depicts a rock formation with much stouter shape than that shown in Isaac Taylor's 1759 "one inch" map of Hampshire. The Doomer etching is contained in Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem (published ca. 1662), which is in the Austrian National Library in Vienna. It is not clear from this drawings what transpired and whether Doomer was exercising artistic license. Doomer's painting shows three stacks when there should have been four, prior to the collapse of Lot's Wife.
Just off the end of The Needles formation is the Shingles, a shifting shoal of pebbles just beneath the waves. The Shingles is approximately three miles in length. Many ships have been wrecked on the Shingles and three notable vessels on The Needles themselves: HMS Assurance in the 18th century, HMS Pomone in the 19th, and SS Varvassi in 1947.
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