It is, I suppose, some five miles from Swanage to Corfe: in summer, a hot, dusty, glaring walk, and featureless, too, until Corfe itself is neared. And Corfe, on a hot summer’s day, is a particularly parched, desiccated, thirsty place; shadeless, receiving and radiating heat from its stony expanse until distant objects, commonly still and stolid enough, dance erratically in the quivering air. It shocks the normally-constituted eye to see ranges of hills, distant churches, and big houses wagging frantically, while yet no symptoms of earthquake have been manifested; yet these signs and portents are common enough at Corfe, when the dog days rage unmitigated. A quiet village though, and pleasing enough when once the traveller has quenched his thirst. The streets converge toward a small market-place, and directly in front, high above the church and the houses, tower the sturdy ruins of Corfe Castle.

To all them that see, or would have, significance in the look of a place or building, Corfe Castle should wear an aspect dour and forbidding indeed, for this is a fortress of a history so particularly bloodstained that few places can vie with it in its bad eminence. But though the shattered ruins of its immense keep still lift up eyeless windows to the sky, they do not seem to frown, as by all associations they should surely do, if we are to believe the picturesque convention of the guide-book writers. No, they compose excellently and impressively, but I can’t say they lower or frown or do anything significant of their career.

The history of Corfe goes back so far as A.D. 978, when the curtain rises upon the tragedy of Edward the King and Martyr, stabbed to death while receiving, on horseback, a stirrup-cup at the hands of his step-mother, Elfrida, who thus sought to clear the way of her own son to the throne of the West Saxons.

The present castle dates from some period between the Norman conquest and the reign of Stephen, when it was the scene of an ineffectual siege laid by him. Then it became a favourite residence with John, who within these strong walls kept his regalia and many unhappy prisoners, many of them starved to death in the dungeons. Here, too, was imprisoned until the succeeding reign Elinor, the sister of Prince Arthur. Removed afterwards to Bristol, she died there after forty years’ captivity. Edward II. was confined here until his removal to Berkeley Castle.

The last events in the history of Corfe Castle were two sieges in 1643 and 1646. The latter was successful, and, by order of the Parliament, the buildings were afterwards “slighted,” i.e., blown up by gunpowder. But so sturdy and so immensely thick were these walls, that although ruined indeed, they still stand, with gateways thrown out of the perpendicular, yet intact. The views from the keep embrace the low-lying heaths that stretch out toward Wareham, and the sullen salt waters of that inland lake, Poole Harbour.