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.