Swanage, it may be supposed, is the capital of Purbeck to-day, although of old Corfe was used to be so considered.
It has ever been the outlet for the stone quarried in the island, and of the famous Purbeck marble—that grey, fossil-spangled mineral, familiar to archæologists throughout England as a favourite material centuries ago for the construction of altar-tombs and fonts. It was shipped here continuously until the new railway was brought down from Wareham; now it goes hence mostly by rail.
Swanage strikes the casual visitor as being some sort of an appanage to that firm of contractors, Mowlem & Burt, for everywhere is the name of Mowlem in Swanage. Indeed, John Mowlem, the senior member of the firm, was born here. He traced his ancestry back to a De Moulham to whom the Conqueror gave a manor of that name in Purbeck, and to strengthen his associations with the town, he repurchased lands here that had once been in that family. He died in 1869. It was he and Mr. Burt who brought about the importation to Swanage of the pinnacled Clock-tower that stands in the gardens of The Grove, overlooking the sea. It had once occupied a position on Old London Bridge, and commemorated the victories of Wellington. When the bridge was rebuilt, the Clock-tower was found to be in the way, and no one knew what to do with it. Eventually it was presented to Mr. Docwra, of The Grove, who sent it down from London in pieces, and rebuilt it here. Thus are the Wellington monuments moved on from place to place by some strange fate. The hideous statue that, at Hyde Park Corner, avenged France for Waterloo, has been relegated to the Fox Hills, at Aldershot; and the monument in Saint Paul’s Cathedral, never yet finished, has been removed from its chapel to a newer site in the nave: the equestrian statue, too, that stands in front of the Royal Exchange, although still in situ, has had a nameless abomination contrived around and below it.
Swanage, like all seaside places, has grown, and is growing yet, but not with the frenzied growth of more accessible places. It has sands, is seated in a charming bay, and is frequented chiefly by recurrent visitors, who, happening here on some day-excursion from Bournemouth, have been stricken with a love of its still unconventional air, after a surfeit of that starchy town that sprawls unwieldy upon the Hampshire coast. These be decent folk, uxorious perhaps, and with large families, but unostentatious and loving quiet, and they come to Swanage time and again. You can see them any forenoon on the sands, Ma and Pa and the children, the nursemaid, and the Maiden Aunt. There always is a Maiden Aunt, by some kindly disposition of Providence; and I hope, for the sake of families in general, there always will be, for, truly, no more beneficent institution exists.
For these people, Swanage is admirable. If it were extensively built upon, they would go elsewhere, and quite right too. But, although the local landowners are eager to spoil the place for the sake of ground-rents, their huge notice-boards facing the sea, offering sites for houses, seem useless enough, and I hope they will remain so, and there’s an end of it.
XXII.
It is, I suppose, some five miles from Swanage to Corfe: in summer, a hot, dusty, glaring walk, and featureless, too, until Corfe itself is neared. And Corfe, on a hot summer’s day, is a particularly parched, desiccated, thirsty place; shadeless, receiving and radiating heat from its stony expanse until distant objects, commonly still and stolid enough, dance erratically in the quivering air. It shocks the normally-constituted eye to see ranges of hills, distant churches, and big houses wagging frantically, while yet no symptoms of earthquake have been manifested; yet these signs and portents are common enough at Corfe, when the dog days rage unmitigated. A quiet village though, and pleasing enough when once the traveller has quenched his thirst. The streets converge toward a small market-place, and directly in front, high above the church and the houses, tower the sturdy ruins of Corfe Castle.
CORFE CASTLE.