CHAPTER II
CORFE CASTLE—SWANAGE
From Wareham we cross the Frome by an ancient bridge, and enter the Isle of Purbeck. The road runs a straight four miles to Corfe, across a heath in which the activities of clay-cutters will be observed. Soon Corfe Castle appears ahead, the mighty upstanding ruins of ancient keep and surrounding walls rising from an abrupt hill curiously situated in a gap of a great range of heights. The stony little town of Corfe comes only after we have swung round by the curving road under the castle hill, and it is well it should be so; for thus, with but the frowning steeps, crested by the military architecture of the medieval times, for company, we obtain the true romantic touch which the little domestic details of the townlet itself would destroy.
It is a romance of cruelty and blood, for which the great castle of Corfe stands. It arose in the great fortress-building era that followed the establishment of the Conqueror’s rule, upon a site already bloodstained and ominous with the murder of King Edward “the Martyr,” A.D. 978, by his stepmother, Queen Elfrida, and it was no sooner built than besieged. King John imprisoned in its dungeons twenty-four knights, adherents of Prince Arthur, captured in Brittany, and either caused them to be starved to death or ended by foul and midnight assassination. And so through the centuries it stood, with constant additions, until there came at last a time when even these stout walls of from ten to fourteen feet thickness were shivered. That was when the castle surrendered to treachery in 1646, after a long siege by the Parliament’s forces. It had withstood a fortnight’s siege in 1643, when the gallant defender, Lady Bankes, beat off horse and men, cannon and siege-train; but now the ancient place was undermined, and gunpowder laid in its foundations. Matches were applied, and the fortress was blown into ruin. As it was left in this process of “slighting,” as the Cromwellians termed their new way with old castles, so it remains to-day.
The gaunt ruins rear boldly up above the stony little town—an impressive sight; and as you go onwards toward Swanage, a backward glance now and then shows how far they dominate the landscape.
And so into Swanage. Time was when such a thing as a brick was a strange thing here and a brick house practically unknown, for the building-stone for which Purbeck is famous was and is the natural material, cheap and plentiful. But things have indeed changed since the coming of the railway into Swanage, and the old stony fishing village is now in great measure a red-brick town, and there are hotels on the seashore that glow like geraniums. There are strange expatriated things in and about Swanage—strange in these surroundings, but ordinary enough in London, whence they came. The great figures in Swanage some forty years ago were Mr. Mowlem and Mr. Burt, of the London contracting firm of Mowlem and Burt, and thus many of the miscellaneous discarded things that found their way into the firm’s yard came at last to a resting-place here. Thus the Town Hall frontage was formerly that of Mercers’ Hall in Cheapside, and the Gothic clock-tower that stands on the shore was formerly on the south side of London Bridge, where it was erected as a memorial to the Duke of Wellington. The lamp-posts in the streets once served the same office in the streets of Westminster and other districts of London, and still bear their old distinctive marks. But the handiwork of the amazing Burt did not end here. He conceived the idea of developing Swanage in the direction of Durlston Head, a stony promontory about one mile to the west, and marked out many roads along what he was pleased to call the “Durlston Park Estate.” The whole thing remains at this day a derelict affair, the text for a sermon on the Vanity of Human Wishes. Nobody ever wanted to live on those steep gradients of the Durlston Park Estate. The roads end at the headland, where, among other manifestations of the Burt whimsies, adjoining the old Tilly Whim caves, on a platform overlooking the sea, is a thing quite famous, locally, as “The Great Globe.” This is an enormous stone globe, some ten feet in height, engraved with representations of the seas and continents of the earth. Behind it, on large tablets, is inscribed a mass of astronomical information, in which most of the family secrets of the solar system are laid bare; and, with a care for the weaknesses of human nature, there are slabs on which those visitors who feel they must carve their names are invited to do so.
CHAPTER III
WOOLBRIDGE HOUSE—LULWORTH COVE—OWERMOIGNE—WEYMOUTH
The seventeen miles between Wareham and Dorchester, through Wool and Warmwell Cross, traverse pretty country and encounter interesting places. Passing the “Pure Drop” Inn, we come to the hamlet of East Stoke. Half a mile to the left, across the River Frome, which runs parallel with the road thus far, are the scanty remains of Bindon Abbey, in a dark situation amid dense trees, and with black and stagnant moat. The stone sarcophagus of some forgotten Abbot of Bindon, resting on the grass, figures in Tess of the D’Urbervilles as that in which the sleep-walking Angel Clare laid Tess. We now come suddenly upon a delightful scene, as the road to Wool is resumed. There, on the right, on the other side of the sedgy Frome, rise the steep roofs and clustered chimneys of such a romantic-looking Elizabethan manor-house as those that were used years ago to make the fortunes of Christmas numbers, in tales of ghosts and hauntings. This is Woolbridge House. The bridge by which one crosses the Frome to it is much more ancient than the house itself, and is a fine, stone-built Gothic structure, with pointed arches and cut-waters up and down stream. The mansion, now a farmhouse belonging to the Erle-Drax family, was once the property of the Turbervilles, who became possessed of some of the lands of Bindon Abbey; and it is therefore with every warranty that Mr. Hardy made the old place figure in his greatest novel, Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Moreover, it does not merely look as though it should be haunted, but actually has, or had, that reputation. It is a particularly creepy and full-flavoured ghost-story that belongs to Woolbridge House—none other, indeed, than that of a passionate Turberville who murdered one of his guests when out for a drive in the family chariot. Unfortunately, this inhospitable deed was perpetrated “once upon a time,” which is the nearest thing the serious historian can make of it; and it will be conceded that this presents some difficulties for the inquirer. The guest, it appears, was one of the family. For many generations the awful apparition of the Turberville coach was believed in, but we do not hear so much of it in these times. It was accustomed to drive up at nights to the house, in every detail of ghastly horror. Ordinary persons—plebeian rustics and the like—might hear it, but only those in whose veins coursed the old hot Turberville blood might actually see the apparition; and as there is not anyone locally known to be of kin to that ancient family, it follows of necessity that ghostly manifestations have long since ceased. But in his novel Mr. Hardy has made splendid use of the old house and of the two life-size portraits of women, supposed to be Turbervilles, that are painted on upstairs walls.
Bere Regis.