Before the silting up of Poole Harbour, Wareham was an important port, and here in 1291 Edward I came to superintend the manning of some ships for one of his numerous expeditions against the French; and in later days the profits of the salmon fishery were given by Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon as a dowry. In the reign of the third Edward the town furnished three ships and fifty-nine men for the siege of Calais.
Mr. Hardy's pre-eminence as a novelist is apt to make us forget that Mrs. Craik (Miss Mulock) was a frequent visitor here, and Agatha's Husband is full of references to the town and the neighbourhood, and contains some delightful character sketches of its inhabitants. Here also lives "Orme Agnus" (Mr. J. C. Higginbotham), at Northport House close to the railway station.
CORFE CASTLE
Situated halfway between Wareham and Swanage, and easily reached from either place, are the ruins of Corfe Castle, all that is left of what was, until the building was demolished by order of the Parliament, one of the most powerful fortresses ever erected in Europe. Tradition associates Corfe Castle, or Corfe, with the murder of "Saynt Edward Kyng and Martyr"; but certain modern antiquaries are rather suspicious of the story, and it is very doubtful if any portion of the existing masonry is of an earlier date than the Conquest, although it is quite possible that so favourable a site would be chosen for its natural defensive properties long before the advent of the Normans. The Saxon Chronicle, recording the murder of Edward, does not mention a castle, but says the foul deed was done "at Corfes Geät", where stood the domus Elfridæ. It has not inaptly been termed the "Royal Prison of Purbeck", and the many famous personages incarcerated here include some French nobles whom King John starved to death early in the thirteenth century. Here also the same monarch imprisoned his niece Eleanor, together with two daughters of the Scottish King, William, sent as hostages. Edward II was confined here by Queen Isabella and her paramour, Roger Mortimer. After being held by various nobles, including George, Duke of Clarence, of Malmsey-wine celebrity, the castle was bought by Sir Christopher Hatton from Queen Elizabeth, and was eventually purchased by Sir John Bankes, to whose descendants it still belongs. On Sir John's joining Charles I at York, in 1642, Lady Bankes held Corfe for the King, and so successful was her heroic defence, that it was only through the treachery of Colonel Pitman, one of the garrison, that she was forced to capitulate in 1645, when the brave defenders were allowed to march out, bearing their arms and with their colours flying. The estates of this "Brave Dame Mary" escaped confiscation, but she was mulcted in heavy fines, while the fortress she had so gallantly held against overwhelming odds was reduced to a mass of picturesque ruins, where wall-flowers grow in the crannies, sweetbrier twists around the base of a bastion, and ivy and honeysuckle crown a detached fragment of a ruined gateway. On every side great masses of broken masonry lie in heaps on the grass, or are seen suspended as if by magic in mid-air, a testimony to the destructive power of gun-powder and to the excellence of the mortar used by the Norman builders. The ancient name of the place was Corvsgate, from Ceorfan to cut, and referred to the natural cutting that surrounds the hill on the summit of which this magnificent fortress was erected.
The little old-world village of Corfe has also many architectural attractions in the way of projecting upper stories supported on columns, gabled houses, and the fine old manor house of the Dackombes. The ruined castle on its scarped hill is fascinating from every point of view. Whether flushed with the warm tints of sunset, veiled by opalescent haze, or looming stern and dark against a dull and stormy sky, it has always great pictorial charm, and a rugged beauty that suggests the embodiment of mediaevalism, its grandeur, pride, cruelty, arrogance, and death.
In the Wessex novels Corfe Castle appears under its ancient name of Corvsgate, and it figures as such in The Hand of Ethelberta, a novel in the early editions of which it is also referred to as "Coomb Castle". Here came Ethelberta on the donkey she had hired at Knollsea (Swanage) on the occasion of the meeting of the Imperial Association, to which she had been invited by Lord Mountclere.
"Accordingly Ethelberta crossed the bridge over the moat, and rode under the first archway of the outer ward…. The arrow-slits, portcullis-grooves, and staircases met her eye as familiar friends, for in her childhood she had once paid a visit to the spot."
Among these historic ruins and the fashionable company that had come to inspect them, Ethelberta disowned her donkey, the faithful steed that had served her so well; and here Lord Mountclere presented her to "Sir Cyril and Lady Blandsbury; Lady Jane Joy; also the learned Dr. Fore; Mr. Small, a talented writer, who never printed his works; the Reverend Mr. Brook, Rector; the Very Reverend Dr. Taylor, Dean; and the rather reverend Mr. Tinkleton, Nonconformist, who had slipped into the fold by chance."
Five miles from Corfe Castle is Swanage, a town that is rapidly coming to the front as a fashionable watering-place. During the summer an excellent steamboat service connects it with Bournemouth and Weymouth, from both of which it is also easily reached by rail. The place has changed vastly since it served as a background for Ethelberta's life history, the place where she retired to marry Lord Mountclere, with Sol and the bridegroom's brother vainly endeavouring to reach "Knollsea" in time to stop the ceremony. Mr. Hardy writes: "Knollsea was a seaside village, lying snug within two headlands as between a finger and thumb. Everybody in the parish who was not a boatman was a quarrier, unless he were the gentleman who owned half the property and had been a quarryman, or the other gentleman who owned the other half, and had been to sea."