Durlston Country Park

DURLSTON COUNTRY PARK Durlston is an early attempt at land development that didn’t work. George Burt, a local Swanage man, was working for his uncle, John Mowlem, who had a building firm in London. Burt began buying up a narrow coastal strip of farmland between Swanage and Durlston Head in 1860s with the idea of developing it into a high-class housing estate. To draw attention to the site Burt and his uncle re-sited two Ionic columns from John Nash’s Regent Street on Prince Albert Park and with the help of Weymouth architect George Crickmay, planned new roads along the cliff top. They planted thousands of trees and shrubs, tamarisks, rhododendrons, fuchsias, Pampas grass, holly, yew and variegated laurel. The Isle of Wight Road was built as the main artery with various roads as offshoots. To attract walkers, they created a picturesque walk, the Undercliff, along the lower cliffs which was reached from the top by a zig-zag path. On his retirement in 1886, Burt commissioned Crickmay to build Durlston Head Castle, a restaurant for the public, sitting on top of a massive globe. He offered eighty-eight plots of land in 1891 and continued to add wooden seats at view-points, a tennis court with a cross-shaped ‘All the Year Round’ seat, a Shakespeare seat and a Walter Scott seat; the last three in stone. The scheme ran until the 1920s but few villas were built. In 1932, Shell employed Graham Sutherland to illustrate the Great Globe for an advertising poster. By 1975, Durlston had become a Country Park and the visitor centre was open. The Country Park has recently won Heritage Lottery Funding and the work on restoring the Park has begun. VISIT GARDENS 07940 877568 www.visitgardens.com A new Timeline serpentine path winds its way from the car park to the Castle with stone monoliths and inscriptions carved and designed by Gary Breeze. Along the side wall of the castle are a sundial and two stone tablets inscribed with various statistics such as ‘The Common Black Swift Flies At The Rate of 200 Miles Per Hour’ and information on the Sun, the Moon and the Stars. Below is the Great Globe built for Burt at Greenwich in 1889; it weighs 40 tonnes and is made up of 15 segments of Portland stone. Several plaques are at the back of the Globe with quotations from various poets including Shakespeare, Pope and Tennyson; they were completed by 1891. Burt planned to have a viewing terrace below the Globe but to prevent it becoming a suicide spot, the Park authorities have hidden both the view and the drop by planting a hedge. Alongside is a tablet placed by Burt inscribed with the words: ‘Persons Anxious to Write Their Names Will/Please Do So On This Stone Only’, and ‘Persons’ have. From here there is a walk along the cliffs past the Tilly Whim Caves to Anvil Point Lighthouse. The caves were a former stone quarry where stones were lowered on whims (cranes) to waiting boats; Burt made them accessible to the public in 1887. The caves open out onto a shelf above the sea but as the Caves were closed in 1976, it’s no longer possible to read Prospero’s words chiselled on the rock: ‘The Cloud Capped Towers/The Gorgeous Palaces/The Solemn Temples’. The path to the lighthouse runs close to the cliff edge and at the entrance gate are the words: ‘Caution/It is Very Dangerous/To Throw Stones’. Walking back inland along Tilly Whim Road to the Castle, there is another path leading east towards Swanage. Along the route are various viewing platforms, stone benches (one inscribed with Burt’s initials) and the Dell which was originally planted with ferns and hardy exotics. VISIT GARDENS 07940 877568 www.visitgardens.com .

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