Isle of Wight Isle of Wight The Isle of Wight (; also referred to informally as The Island or abbreviated to IoW) is a county and the largest and second-most populous island in England. It is in the English Channel, between 2 and 5 miles off the coast of Hampshire, separated by the Solent. The island has resorts that have been holiday destinations since Victorian times, and is known for its mild climate, coastal scenery, and verdant landscape of fields, downland and chines. The island has been home to the poets Swinburne and Tennyson and to Queen Victoria, who built her much-loved summer
Geology of the Isle of Wight Geology of the Isle of Wight The geology of the Isle of Wight is dominated by sedimentary rocks of Cretaceous and Paleogene age. This sequence was affected by the late stages of the Alpine Orogeny, forming the Isle of Wight monocline, the cause of the steeply-dipping outcrops of the Chalk Group and overlying Paleogene strata seen at The Needles, Alum Bay and Whitecliff Bay. Rocks of Devonian, Triassic and Jurassic age are known to be present in the subsurface of the island from boreholes and interpreted seismic reflection profiles. Up to 389 m of presumed Devonian sedimentary rocks been proved