Swanage

Swanage is a seaside town at the eastern end of the Isle of Purbeck, in the south-east corner of Dorset, about 6 miles south of Poole. It grew in the 19th century, when John Mowlem and George Burt built the town’s first pier and developed the Durlston estate, and the Victorian pier still stands on Swanage Bay. At the 2021 census the parish had 9,426 residents.

Studland lies just north over the chalk ridge, where a long curve of sandy beach backed by dunes and heathland runs round Studland Bay, with Knoll Beach and Shell Bay among its sections. Old Harry Rocks, three chalk formations at Handfast Point, lie north east of Swanage and mark the easternmost point of the Jurassic Coast. They can be seen from the Dorset section of the South West Coast Path.

To the south, Durlston Country Park is a 320 acre nature reserve on the edge of town. Durlston Castle was built in 1887 as a restaurant for Burt’s estate, the Great Globe is a limestone sphere three metres across, and the sea cliffs hold a colony of 400 guillemots.

For a day without the car, Swanage Railway runs steam and diesel trains over five and a half miles from Swanage through Harman’s Cross and Corfe Castle to Norden. Corfe Castle, now run by the National Trust, stands in a gap in the Purbeck Hills between Swanage and Wareham.