Selborne (White)

The Wakes was bought by Gilbert White's grandfather, the Vicar of Selborne, for his wife to live in after his death.  It passed to Gilbert's barrister father and eventually to Gilbert, who never married.  When the house came up for sale in the 1950s, Robert Washington Oates, the brother of Lawrence 'Titus' Oates of Antarctic fame, bought it to house a museum to White, Lawrence and Frank Oates, who was a naturalist and explorer and died of a fever in Africa.  White's life spanned the 18th Century and he can be credited with beginning the new science of biology by his observations of nature and his correspondence with other scientists.