1 Eastcliff Road, Shanklin - 01983 862 606 email@wightsun.co.uk

The town takes its name from the chine "Chynklyng Chine".

Shanklin is a popular seaside resort and civil parish on the Isle of Wight, located on the east coast's Sandown Bay. The sandy beach, its Old Village and a wooded ravine, Shanklin Chine, are its main attractions. The esplanade along the beach is occupied by hotels and restaurants for the most part, and is one of the most tourist-oriented parts of the town. The other is the Old Village, at the top of Shanklin Chine.

Shanklin has one theatre, Shanklin Theatre, which is just off the top end of the High Street.

In July and August 1819 the poet John Keats lodged at Eglantine Cottage in the resort's High Street, where he completed the first book of Lamia and began a drama, Otho the Great, with his friend Charles Armitage Brown.

In July 1868 the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow stayed at the Crab Inn in Shanklin's Old Village during his last visit to Europe and left a poem about it on a stone by the pub. It is not generally held to be amongst his best work.

Shanklin has two beaches; 'Small Hope Beach' and 'Hope Beach.' Small Hope Beach eventually meets Sandown Beach and has many beach huts available for hire, and a small cafe. Hope Beach stretches in the opposite direction. Above Hope Beach is the esplanade which boasts some traditional seaside attractions including an amusement arcade, a crazy golf course, and a children's play area, with slides, ball pools, bouncy castles, rigging, swings etc available to be hired for a childs birthday party. There are several seafront hotels, a cliff lift from the seafront to the top of the cliff, a putting course, several cafes and restaurants and pubs, and a large, clean beach. Shanklin used to have a pier, but this was destroyed in the Great Storm of 1987. The pier formerly had a theatre at which many famous performers appeared, including Paul Robeson, Richard Tauber and Arthur Askey (whose daughter attended a local boarding school called Upper Chine School for Girls). The Summerland Amusement Arcade on the seafront was formerly a seaplane hangar positioned at Bembridge where it housed Campania flying boats of the Nizam of Hyderabad's Squadron. Much of the seafront was cleared in World War Two bombing. There is a sailing club at the end of the esplanade.

Further along the beach is the Fisherman's Cottage pub. This is at the bottom of Shanklin Chine, from which the town takes its name. The Chine is open to the public for a small fee and continues up to Rylstone Gardens in the Old Village.. It contains a small section of the pipe of the "Operation Pluto" pipeline which ran across the Isle of Wight and out from Shanklin and another branch from Sandown to supply fuel to the D-Day beaches.