Shorwell (pronounced ‘Shorrel’) is a village of thatched stone cottages at the foot of the downs in the south-west of the island. Step inside St Peter’s Church for the big wall painting of St Christopher over the north door, dated to around 1470. It shows the saint bearing the Christ Child across a river full of fish, with ships and a man fishing from the bank, and on the right an arrow meant for the saint flies back into the eye of the king who ordered him shot. The parish has three manor houses, Northcourt, Westcourt and Wolverton, and Northcourt, begun in 1615, is the largest on the island. Above the village is Shorwell Down, the eastern end of Brighstone Down, in the Isle of Wight National Landscape.
