It is a hamlet by Newport, and actually part of it, and is known to scientists for two considerable reasons, having to do with Roman Britain and world earthquakes. Here in 1926 were unearthed the foundations of a Roman villa. Three of the eight rooms have mosaic pavements fairly complete and well preserved. An interesting find was an open fireplace, very unusual in a Roman house. The arrangements for the heating of the baths were astonishingly elaborate for so small a house. Part of the villa has now been completed with walls and roof, so that it can be pictured as a dwelling-place and not a mere foundation, and in it we may see many coins and pieces of pottery.

As for earthquakes, time was when, if an earthquake happened anywhere, Shide was almost always the first to record it. Professor John Milne built an earthquake observatory here and made this quiet green village famous through the scientific world. Now the observatory is no more. The good work is carried on at Oxford, and Shide is left peaceful and forgotten, but it seems a good place to remember good John Milne, who died here in 1913 and lies at Barton, a little way off.

This remarkable man, after interesting experiences in Central Europe, Newfoundland, and Palestine, found himself at 24 a servant of the Japanese Government, and it was on his first night in Tokyo that he was so impressed by an earthquake that he resolved to study earthquakes for the rest of his life. He lived another 40 years and kept his word. The Japanese Government made him the first Professor of Seismology in the Imperial University. The practical and scientific results of the novel study Professor Milne thus initiated have been of capital importance. It has saved an incalculable number of lives, and prevented an inestimable amount of damage. He discovered methods of building houses and bridges which make these structures comparatively immune from the effects of earth tremors. Having spent twenty years in Japan, and visited the principal earthquake regions of the Pacific coast, he returned to England in 1895 and settled at Shide, where he established a highly equipped observatory.

Text courtesy of: Southern Life (UK)