We will talk about Swanage, as a popular seaside destination which is perhaps representative of Dorset at large, though Dorchester is the county town.
Swanage is a small seaside town on the south coast of England, on the so-called Jurassic coast, in the county of Dorsetshire. Dorset has a long etymological origin; the Romans in the first century Anno Domini occupied it as ‘Durnovaria’, possibly a Latinised version of the older Brittonic word meaning 'place of fist-sized pebbles'. The Saxons named the same Roman town as Dornwaraceaster. 'Dornsaete' then came in to use, meaning ‘people from the town of Dornwaraceaster’, ‘-saete’ being Old English for ‘people’. The county is first mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. In the 800’s Anno Domini, King Alfred the Great of Wessex (the 'West Saxons') defeated the Danes in a naval battle in Swanage Bay.
Swanage lies on the Isle of Purbeck, which is attached to the mainland. As you walk through its pleasant streets, potent seaweed fills the air. Seagulls cackle and cawk. And compared to nearly every other town in England, and especially seaside towns, that we have visited, it still feels like our places across England did in the early 2000’s. The high streets are packed with shops that have quaint names that you haven’t heard of before and that locals are fond of and talk about by word of mouth. ‘Tilly Whims’ and ‘Fortes’ icecream shop, for example. Many independent shops cram the narrow and tall corridors of streets, which are immaculately built. Nearly everyone is white English, the majority are elderly, but there are also a lot of younger people who look healthy and happy. The streets bend and curve with the coast; and when one leaves a shop or pub or restaurant one gets the same feeling as that in Edinburgh, another old seaside town. The craggy brick, pastel buildings rise on either side of the narrow streets to form tall and cosy corridors through the town.
The bay stretches in a claw shape facing the Isle of Wight, the white cliffs of which you can see far across the sea. The houses are of old construction, with pastel and sun-bleached stone, rugged and uncut and unpolished, like the craggy and tall promontory to the north; this is next to red brickwork which is regular and straight, and seeps burnt umbers and cracked ochre and soft oranges. There is harmony between the smooth brick and the rougher chaos of the stone. Indeed, we read that much of the stone along the Dorset coast was in the past transported to London and helped build it; it must therefore be good quality stone. The textured and aged red brickwork slopes into the chimneyed roofs of houses, flats and small shops.
A rugged stone war memorial sits in the middle of the patch of grass at the centre of the east-facing bay with the names of Swanage men who died for their country engraved. Sailing boats of various kinds sit in the bay, so that it looks like an old painting you see in art galleries. The people are white English, yes, but they look different and feel somewhat alien to, say, the people towards the East coast of England. You can imagine that some look Saxon, some look like south-western Celts, and some look like they came from sea-faring people from the far-flung coasts of our island.
You go to a classic seaside pub and get the feeling of an old and wonky wood-panelled ship interior, perhaps full of seadogs, like the interior of some old man of war. The pub feels globally connected, in an older sense. One can imagine the great many sailors from all sorts of lands with all sorts of stories frequenting pubs like this when they returned to dry land, to acquire some rum or illicit whisky - people full to the brim with tales, and speaking many different languages and accents - and long-gone locals returning home. A great antique map of the world fills the wall as evidence of this old global outlook; strange, perhaps, for a small coastal town. But this is echoed in the globe at Durlston castle. There is a sense of looking outward to the world from a high place, the centre. The people, you can imagine, look like they could have been sailors or pirates in the past; some have terrible teeth, and they have a kind of sea-trodden and salt-strewn, taught faces. They are lean. Some have the jumpiness of the Glaswegians in their gait, like they are onboard a ship. Some barmen are lean, with sandy hair, others are buff, brown-eyed and bearded men; one can start to see a motley crew of sea-faring ancestors.
This is in contrast to what seem like the land-folk of Dorset, ‘Dorchester people’, who are rich and old and cultivated, and dress well in their pastel shirts and shorts and sandals. They like birds and flowers and tea and cake. These folk look like they come from villages inland, and form the majority of the people in Swanage, we would say; there is not much of the sea in them.
There is perhaps something inherently Celtic about the seafaring people of the past in our United Kingdom, and it is associated with the West coast. Indeed, we think of whisky and rum and the drinking habits of Irish and Scots. And ‘pirate music’ often has a folkish-Celtic vibe. And if many of the western parts of our United Kingdom are Celtic in origin; this is not such a stretch. You get this in Dorset; albeit a more civilised manifestation. In the same breath, we are reminded of the great Campbeltown and mystical Islay and the illicit whisky trades of old Scotland. There is something mystical about the West coast of our islands it seems.
There is an old steam train that hoots and is apparently is run by volunteers. This can take you to Corfe castle - a terrifying building. There is a Budgens - an old English supermarket chain, which we have not seen for a while except for one in Milton Keynes. There is a butcher, a very old gem stone shop, and many unique shops. There are no shutters. The streets, beach, and everything is clean. Behind the pier, a stone and hollowed out monument, kind of like the spires of Scottish churches. The monument atop of which are three canonballs, celebrating the naval victory of Alfred the Great in Swanage Bay. You can visit Durlston Castle. It won awards for accessibility, and it is certainly very well equipped, with lifts and ramps, geared towards all the elderly that go there, one would imagine. There is educational material everywhere for adults and children, clean fresh oak wood-panelled walls and rooms, an immaculate iron spiral staircase up to the rooftop that shakes. The Latin names of oh so many plants and creatures from Dorset are lit up on the wall; cream tea is available. And from the balconies you can see Old Harry’s rocks sticking out, and behind it the long and thin line where Bournemouth lies. Old Harry’s rocks are said to be named after a pirate who lurked behind its corners, or to allude to ‘Old Harry’ - the devil. The thin Bournemouth bay stretches all the way to the Solent, that strait of land that separates the mainland from the Isle of Wight. It is known from geology that Old Harry’s rocks and the Pinnacles used to connect to the Isle of Wight. The Isle of Wight juts up rudely in contrast to the thin line of the mainland coast. On a clear day, it is crisply visible through binoculars and by naked eye, particularly those white cliffs. The Isle of Wight is known for its multi-coloured sand. Geologically, this is a very interesting region indeed which produces high quality stone.
To the south of Durlston castle, the London bollards flanked the gritty paths. These were carried back from London as ballast after delivery of stone. The first bollards were cannons from the Napoleonic wars, used to guard pavements from heavy iron chariots. Trees overhang these steep paths which lead down to the cliff edge. Some pink and bleached fauna burst forth over the path; and it almost resembles the banks of an Italian lake. On the cliff face, you can look towards the lighthouse and Tilly Whims caves. Like the globe monument nearby which you can see, as once painted by Sutherland for a Shell advert, you get a sense of looking out over the whole world from high up. The walls are plastered with poems about our sea, about the rough waves, and information about birds - Guillemots, and the predators, the Peregrine Falcons. There are maps. Maps enscribed in stone. Stone embossed plaques showing the map of the South Coast, as you look out across the English channel towards Cherbourg, France. There are two of these; one around the Isle of Purbeck and one encompassing the whole southern part of our island looking southward. There is information about Graham Sutherland, the surrealist artist who painted a bad picture of Churchill and the globe, and some link to Lawrence of Arabia, it seems. Many books are available in the gift shop on good walking routes, and information about the flowers of Dorset plaster the walls for the elderly. Old men who have never met talk like old friends. Outside, a path leads through the geological history of the earth, indeed this Jurassic coast is interesting for its stone and rocks and fossils, and there is a room with an educational video about the geological history of Durlston and Dorset, for children and otherwise.
In the town, many houses and flats are for sale as the elderly population die and leave their homes to their sons and daughters, who live in London and decide to sell. It seems fuelled by rich and retired elderly perhaps. But the quantity of houses for sale perhaps show our top-heavy population, as the elderly here die out. Maybe elderly will continually be pumped into there the region to keep it going. Our fear is that it will meet the fate of other English seaside towns eventually, like Blackpool and Bridlington, which are deteriorated.
If we can leave an impression, it is that Swanage is remarkably green for the seaside.