1905 it was the scene of a furious struggle between rival builders, who fight to cover the land with copious red bricks. Thomas Hardy lived here for the winter of 1875/6, and the town is described in his Hand of Ethelberta (1876) as Knollsea where 'everybody in the parish who was not a boatman was a quarrier The wide bay gives good views, to the Isle of Wight in good weather with the chalk cliffs leading to Old Harry Rocks to the north and the sweep of the downs Inland. The main beach is on the north side of the town, along Shore Road, with an amusement park, recreation ground and bandstand behind it. The Mowlem, at the south-east end of Shore Road, commemorates John Mowlem (1788-1868), the successful stone and building contractor.

Swanage Railway

The award-winning Swanage Railway currently operates on the six miles of track between Swanage and Norden, through the beautiful Isle of Purbeck, passing the magnificent ruins of Corfe Castle. The goals of the Swanage Railway Trust (the controlling body of the Swanage Railway) are to restore the rail link between Swanage and Wareham, re-establishing a daily service to connect with main line trains, and to create a comprehensive historical record of steam railways and steam technology in Southern England. This goal was brought a step closer on 3rd January 2002 when the remaining sections of track were laid at Norden. A special service operated on 8th September when the first through train from the main line at Wareham visited Swanage.

Swanage Pier

The original Swanage Pier was constructed in 1859/60 by James Walton of London for the Swanage Pier and Tramway Company and opened by John Mowlem. The Pier was built primarily for shipping stone. Horses were used to pull carts along the narrow gauge tramway which ran along the Pier and seafront. This was intended as a track to link Swanage and Langton Matravers quarries with the Pier, but local opposition caused the track to finish at the `Bankers` (now known as the Parade) where some of the original track can still be seen. When George Burt started a steamer service between Swanage, Poole and Bournemouth in 1874, the Pier was being used for day-trippers as well as stone cargo, it soon became clear that the Pier was unable to cope with the ever increasing traffic and it was decided a new and longer Pier was needed. The first pile of the new Pier was driven on November 30th 1895 and the pier opened to traffic on March 29th 1897. The first steamer, the P.S. Lord Elgin landed people on May 1st 1896. The last was the P.S. Embassy on August 24th 1966, In 1940 the landward end of the Pier was blown up as an anti invasion precaution. Following the war,steamer traffic was temporarily revived in 1948 but with the Embassy`s departure in August 1966 the Pier deteriorated for almost 30 years In 1994, the Swanage pier Trust acquired control of the Pier Company, with the aim of keeping the Pier open to residents and visitors and providing for its eventual total restoration.

Already over £1,100.000 of has been spent on restoring the timber structure, following an enormous amount of construction work, The renovations were financed by funding of £700,000 from the Lottery & English Heritage, plus other grants amounting to £100,400. A huge effort from the local community and visitors raised the balance of £299,600 in four years. In order to keep the Pier from again falling into disrepair and dereliction, £100,000 needs to be raised every year - £60,000 for running costs (kept to a minimum by all the volunteer labour) and £40,000 for planned maintenance Lord Raglan the Pier Trust Patron cut the ribbon to declare the Pier, re-opened, at a colourful and well attended ceremony on Sunday July 27th 1998.

Visit Swanage Pier Website

Swanage History

Until 50,000 years ago Purbeck was still connected with the Isle of Wight. In Purbeck evidence of early man in the Old Stone Age is rare. These primitive people were nomadic hunters. Flakes of flint used to tip arrows or sharpen primitive tools have been found in Purbeck from the Middle Stone Age. In 1931 road widening at Ulwell revealed flint tools and a small gathering pit containing periwinkles, cockles and limpets. In the New Stone Age, from about 2,500 B.C., the inhabitants were herdsmen, still nomadic, cleared bushes away with flint or hand axes and hoes to grow wheat and barley on the hills. A stone axe has been found on Ballard Down and others found near Swanage. By now the coastline has more or less reached its present form. Neolithic men seem to have preferred the high chalk land and built earthworks there. The Britons buried their more important dead in long barrows. The only one in Purbeck is on Nine Barrow Down above Ailwood Farm. The stone circle at Rempstone consists of Studland ferruginous sandstone and was probably erected by the Bronze Age ‘Beaker folk’ who invaded Britain about 1,800 B.C. They raised the round barrows on the chalk ridge, later named Nine Barrow Down, prominently seen from the valley ever since. These were burial of the more important folk, the dead usually being laid on their side in a crouched position, sometimes with ‘grave goods’ such as their characteristic pottery and drinking-beakers. One of these skeletons was found in the round barrow on Ballard Down above the waterworks at Ulwell which was the site of an obelisk erected in 1892 by George Burt to commemorate the bringing of pure water to Swanage. The so called Giant’s Grave and Giant’s Trencher on Godlingston Hill were excavated in 1851 and 1857 by the Rev. J. H. Austen who found nothing, and is doubtful whether either was in fact a barrow. There were burial urns of the ‘collared’ type were found in five small ‘bowl’ barrows on Ballard Down. At this period, sheep were kept for weaving wool, and barley was grown on the higher land. About 1,000 a large number of immigrant Celts arrived using ploughs, who introduced settled farming. Bronze tools and weapons became more common. Trade increased with Normandy in the fifth century B.C. which in turn made Hengistbury at the mouth of the Stour and Avon become a very busy port. Sometimes easterly gales pushed some ships heading for this port into Studland or Swanage bay. In Purbeck, needles, burnished tools and weaving combs made of bone were preserved in the limestone soil.

About 450 B.C. Celts using iron crossed the Channel, some landing at Lulworth Cove, others in Poole Harbour. They overran the Bronze Celts whose weapons could not compete with iron. The Celts built many hill-forts on the higher chalk lands to guard against another threatened invasion from Gaul. The fort of Flowers Barrow above Worbarrow Bay was constructed on the ridge way track which extended eastwards to Ballard and westwards towards the great fort of Maiden Castle, which became the capital of the Durotriges tribe. Later another tribe, the warlike Belgae, invaded Dorset and captured Maiden Castle. They had wheeled ox-drawn ploughs and war chariots. But the Durotriges survived and even struck their own primitive coins. Some changes in society were beginning to show. Freemen and slaves began to appear. The slaves were probably descendants from the conquered Bronze Celts or earlier Britons. Military men increased their power as defence from attacks by strangers was of first importance. From all this the concept of the ‘manor’ began to appear. Land ownership was gradually accepted but as yet there was no organisation of the estate in which labour could be gathered round an economic centre, and many serfs lived alongside the free owners and free tenants.

Where does this leave Swanage, the parish to be? The first essential for any permanent settlement was the provision of water, and here was a line of springs emerging from the limestone hills westward from Peveril Point. I t is probable that the first settlements were here, forming the hamlets which would become Swanage, Newton and Herston. There were other springs coming from the chalk, and here they became hamlets of Whitecliff, Ulwell and Godlingston. They were little more than groups of a few huts, built of wood and thatch. Later there were small areas of cultivation around these settlements, particularly where the soil was suitable, but for the rest there was extensive pasture and then vast areas of ‘waste’, thick woods below the downs, and the marshy lagoon stretching a mile inland from the sea. Such might have been the scene when the Romans arrived in Dorset soon after the invasion of A.D. 43 when Vespasian took Maiden Castle after, it seems, fierce fighting with the Celts. The area was amongst the first in southern England to trade with Rome via Gaul in the first century B.C. Quarrying and manufacturing in Purbeck was already known to the Romans before the invasion, so the new masters soon continued these activities with Celtic labourers. Four centuries of comparative peace imposed on warring Celts resulted in the increase of population and extension of agricultural land. Although the Romans were here so long, their civilisation remained essentially urban; it overlaid that of the Celts but did not destroy it. One reason for this was that the Celts remained the backbone of the workforce, keeping top their own language and there were generally few Romans in any rural area. Roads and cities which survived in some degree until after the Dark Ages were the most lasting memory of the Romans after they had left. A new Roman port was established within Poole Harbour, near Hamworthy. From this new port it was easier to approach Purbeck by sea at Swanage. In Swanage it was said that Roman remains were found in the vicinity of Whitecliff, and it was supposed that the farm was built on the site of a villa, but there was no firm evidence. However in 1877 two stone-lined graves or cists were discovered on the cliff nearby. Romano-British farm buildings of a simpler type were discovered in 1940 at Woodhouse over the hill in Studland. More excavations were continued there between 1952-58. In 1961 David Henstridge of Swanage discovered a collection of Roman coins below the sand at the foot of the Grand Hotel. The British Museum identified them as mostly third and fourth centuries A.D. but others of Chios, Carthage and Crete third century B.C. Among the designs they show a sphinx, an eagle, a bull, a nymph, and a harp. The varied provenances and dates remain a puzzle. Many Romano-British graves have been found in Swanage. In 1953 a grave of c.A.D 150 was discovered in Atlantic Road. It was constructed with slabs of local stone and contained, besides the skeleton, three dozen large iron nails, probably the remains of a wooden coffin, and a brooch. A Roman burial ground was found near the edge of the cliff of Durlston Bay. More cists were discovered at Herston, now obliterated. But the most impressive discovery locally was that at Ulwell. During building work at the recently named Shepard’s Farm in 1949, three burials in cist graves and a Roman roof-tile were found. Further building in 1982 caused digging northwards into the hillside, and this resulted in a Romano-British cemetery being unearthed, containing 57 inhumations. Some were in simple earth graves, others in stone cists. There was only one ‘grave good’, a small iron knife. The skeletons were of men, women and children, and all were facing east, but it is not certain whether it was a Christian cemetery. It was used over several generations and continued into the seventh century. It is there might be remains a of seventh-century settlement beneath the well’ in 1881, and then in the 1950s Cyril Parsons, while working in the approach to the tithe barn, found a number of skulls. Then in 1993 a few more bones were unearthed below the south wall of the Barn Museum, all of which have not got a date to them.

Purbeck marble was quarried in Swanage by the Romans. Peveril probably being one of the first marble quarries as it was an easily accessible site. Plenty of it could be extracted near the surface. It could also be exported from Swanage Bay when the weather was favourable. It was about the 440’s that Roman Rule ended. This was caused partly by the barbarian invasions. Looting and killing took place, particularly near the coast, and discipline broke down.

The Germanic hordes that descended in large numbers were illiterate so there is little evidence, apart from objects from graves in pagan cemeteries. Hampshire was invaded by the West Saxons who, it’s been suggested, moved north and west. It was probable that Purbeck was the last area of Dorset to be taken. When Alfred became king in 871 the Danes attacked Wessex. He was not yet able to drive them out and had to but them off. But they returned five years later, having overcome Mercia, and took Wareham as a base. In 877 it appears that the Danes were sailing west for Exeter, when their fleet was wrecked on Peveril ledges, and the mystery has never ceased to engage the attentions of not just historians but everyone else as well. It has been said there was a naval battle between the Danes and Alfred the Great. In 1862 a granite column was erected by John Mowlem to commemorate this battle. But the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded that the Danes were caught up in a huge storm at sea off Swanage and 120 ships were lost. Another account said there was more of thick mist rather than a storm. Everyone would have liked to believe in the victory at Peveril, but evidence is all against it. It seemed at this point in time that Alfred was powerless at sea. He was soon able to build long-boats having 60 oars each, much bigger than the Danes.