With its carefully tended gardens, neat cottages and two pubs offering "full Sunday lunch", the commuter village of Downe would seem to have little in common with the grandeur of the Taj Mahal or the pyramids of Giza. But thanks to its 162-year association with Charles Darwin, the well-heeled village and a substantial chunk of affluent greenbelt in the south-east London borough of Bromley could soon be rubbing shoulders with breathtaking monuments under the shared status of a World Heritage Site. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport confirmed on April 16th 2004 that it has selected Downe, where Darwin lived for more than 40 years, and the surrounding land where he conducted many of his studies, to be put forward for the Unesco award in 2007 - ahead of other shortlisted locations including the Lake District and Stratford-Upon-Avon. The proposed heritage site will be centred on Down House, a Georgian pile once described by Darwin himself as an "oldish and ugly building", where he wrote his revolutionary work on natural selection, The Origin of Species. When Darwin moved in to Down House in 1842, shortly after his voyage of discovery to South America on HMS Beagle, the surrounding area was still deep in the Kent countryside, half a day's journey from London. Today the woodland and hedgerows where the scientist and father-of-eight once honed his theories of natural and sexual selection are dotted with comfortable bungalows and golf courses. The heritage area itself is likely to spread some three miles beyond Darwin's former home to the adjoining villages of Cudham and Keston, where he collected samples of orchids for his studies or walked with his dog to mull over his theories. If the application is successful, the result could be tens of thousands of extra visitors to the area, providing a boon to local businesses but raising concern that the narrow lanes surrounding Down House could become choked with coach parties retracing the footsteps of the father of evolution theory.