SWANAGE TO CORFE CASTLE

That pilgrim who, whether on foot or by cycle, shall elect to trace these landmarks, will find the road out of Swanage to Corfe, by way of Langton Matravers and Kingston a heart-breaking stretch of stony hills, whose blinding glare under a summer sun is provocative of ophthalmia, and whose severities of stone walling, in place of green hedges, recall the scenery of Ireland. Herston, too, the unlovely outskirt of Swanage, is not encouraging. But the world—it is a truism—is made up of all sorts, and here, as elsewhere, rewards come after trials.

Langton Matravers, on the ridge-road, is, just as one might suppose from the stony nature of Purbeck, a village of stone houses, and very grim and unornamental ones too. Nine hundred souls live here, and so long as the “Langton freestone” won from its quarries is in good demand, are happy enough, although subject to every extremity of weather. The “Matravers” in the place-name derives from the old manorial lords, the Maltravers family, who dropped the “l” out of their name some time after one of their race, deeply implicated in the barbarous murder of Edward II., proved himself a very “bad Travers” indeed, and so made his name peculiarly descriptive.Passing Gallows Gore Cottages—what a melodramatic address to own!—we come to Kingston village, along just such a road, with just such a view as that described in The Hand of Ethelberta, although, to be sure, she went, on that donkey-ride to Corfe, by another and very roundabout route, through Ulwell Gap, over Nine Barrow Down. Ordinary folk would have gone by the ordinary road; but then, you see, Ethelberta was a poetess, and “unconventionality—almost eccentricity—was de rigueur” for such an one. Hence also that unconventional, and uncomfortable, seat on the donkey’s back.

From this point Corfe Castle is exquisitely seen, down below the ridge, but situated on the course of the minor, but still mighty, backbone that bisects the Isle. From hence, too, the country may be seen spread out like a map, “domains behind domains, parishes by the score, harbours, fir-woods and little inland seas mixing curiously together.” Dipping down out of sight of all these distant Lands of Promise, among the richly wooded lanes of Kingston, the glaring limestone road is exchanged for shaded ways, where sunlight only filters through in patches of gold, looking to the imaginative as though some giant had come this way and dropped the contents of his money-bags. Thatched cottages, tall elms, and old-fashioned roadside gardens are the features of Kingston; but above all these, geographically and in every other respect, is the great and magnificent modern church built for Lord Eldon and completed in 1880, after seven years’ work and a vast amount of money had been expended upon it. It was designed by Street—that same “obliterator of historic records”—who at Fawley Magna earned Mr. Hardy’s satire; but here were no records to obliterate. Certain reminiscences of the architect’s early studies of the early Gothic of the Rhine churches may be traced here, in the exterior design of the apsidal chancel, strongly resembling that of Fawley, but one would hesitate to apply the opprobrious term of “German-Gothic” to this, as a whole. Its intention is Early English, but the general effect is rather of a Norman spirit informed with Early English details; an effect greatly accentuated by the heaviness and bulk of the central tower, intended by Lord Eldon to be a prominent landmark, and fulfilling that intention by the sacrifice of proportion to the rest of the building. Cruciform plan, size, and general elaboration render this a church particularly unfitted for so small and so rustic a village. Had its needs been studied, rather than the ecclesiological tastes of the third Lord Eldon, the little church built many years ago for the first earl, the great lawyer-lord, by Repton, would have sufficed; although to be sure it has all the faults of the first attempts at reviving Gothic.

The Earl of Eldon purchased the manor of Kingston and the residence of Encombe from William Morton Pitt in 1807. Here, in that little church built by him, he lies, beside his “Bessie,” that Bessie Surtees with whom he, then plain and penniless John Scott, eloped from the old house on Sandhill, Newcastle-on-Tyne, in 1772. His house of Encombe, the “Enkworth Court,” of The Hand of Ethelberta, lies deep down in the glen of Encombe, approached by a long road gradually descending into the cup-like crater by the only expedient of winding round it. Think of all the beautiful road scenery you have ever seen or heard of, and you will not have seen or been told of anything more beautiful in its especial kind of beauty than this sequestered road down into Lord Eldon’s retreat. Jagged white cliffs here and there project themselves out of the steep banks of grass and moss above the way, draped with a profusion of small-leaved ground-ivy and a wealth of hart’s-tongue ferns, and trees romantically shade the whole. An obelisk erected by the great statesman, on a bold bluff, to the memory of his brother, Lord Stowell, adds an element of romance to the scene, and then, plunging into a final mass of tangled woodland, the grey stone elevation of the house is seen, ghostlike, fronting a gravel drive, in its silence and drawn blinds looking less like the home of some fairy princess than the residence of a misanthrope, who has retired beyond the reach of the world and drawn his blinds, with the hope of persuading any who may possibly find their way here that he is not at home.

Encombe

“Enkworth Court” was, we are told, “a house in which Pugin would have torn his hair,” and Encombe certainly can possess no charms for amateurs of Gothic. Nor can it possibly delight students of the ancient Greek and Roman orders, for its architecture has classic intentions without being classical, and heaviness without dignity. But its interior, if it likewise does not appeal to a cultivated taste in matters connected with the mother of all the arts, is exceptionally comfortable. Here the old Chancellor, over eighty years of age, spent most of his declining days. “His sporting days were over; he had but little interest in gardening or farming; and his only reading, beside the newspaper, was a chapter in the Bible. His mornings he spent in an elbow-chair by the fireside in his study—called his shop—which was ornamented by portraits of his deceased master, George III. and his living companion, Pincher, a poodle dog.”

From Kingston to Corfe Castle, the bourne of innumerable summer visitors, is two miles. The first glimpse of town and castle is one which clearly shows how aptly the site of them obtained its original name of Corvesgate, from the Anglo-Saxon ceorfan, to cut. The site was so named long before castle or town were erected here, and referred to the passages cut or carved through the bold range of hills by the little river Corfe and its tributaries. Those clefts are clearly distinguished from here and from the main road between Corfe and Swanage, and are notched twice, so deeply into the stony range, that the eminence on which the castle stands is less like a part of one continuous chain of hills than an isolated conical hill neighboured by lengthy ridges.

On that islanded hill, shouldered by taller neighbours, the castle was built, because at this point it so effectually guarded these passes from the shores of Purbeck to the inland regions. The position in these days seems a singular one, for from the upper slopes of those neighbours it is possible to look down into the castle and observe its every detail, but such things mattered little in days before artillery.

A first impression of Corfe, if it be summer, is an impression of dazzling whiteness; resolved, on a nearer approach, into the pure white of the road and of the occasional repairs and restorations of the stone-built streets, the grey white of buildings past their first novelty, and the dead greyness of the roofing slabs of stone. There is little colour in Corfe when June has gone. The golden-green lichens and houseleeks of spring have been sucked dry by the summer heats and turned to withered rustiness, and even the grass of the pyramidical hill on which the castle keep is reared has little more than an exhausted sage-green hue.

“Corvsgate Castle,” as we find it styled in The Hand of Ethelberta, is frequently the scene, at such a time of year, of meetings like that of the “Imperial Association” in that story. All that is to be known respecting these ruins, “the meagre stumps remaining from flourishing bygone centuries,” is the common property of all interested in historical antiquities, but there is something, it may be supposed, in revisiting the oft-visited and in retelling the old tale, which bids defiance to ennui and precludes satiety, even although the President’s address be a paraphrase of the last archÆological paper, and that the echo of its predecessor, and so forth, in endless diminuendo:

And smaller fleas have lesser fleas,
And so ad infinitum.

“Carfe,” as any Wessex man of the soil will name it, just as horses are ‘harses’ and hornets become ‘harnets’ in his ancient and untutored pronunciation, is, as already hinted, a place of stone buildings, where brick, although not unknown, is remarkable. Stone from foundation to roof, and stone slabs of immense size for the roofs themselves. In a place where building-stone is and has been so readily found it is, of course, in the nature of things to find the remains of a castle that must have been exceptionally large and strong, and here they are, peering over the rooftops of the town from whatever point of view you choose. The castle is as essential a feature in all views of the town as it is in history; and rightly too, for had it not been for that fortress there would have been no town. It is a town by courtesy and ancient estate, and a village by size; a village that does not grow and has so far escaped the desecration of modern streets. The market cross, recently restored to perfection from a shattered stump, and the town hall both declare it to have been a town, as does, or did, the existence of a mayor, but such things have long become vanities. The return of two members to Parliament, a privilege Corfe enjoyed until reform put an end to it in 1832, proved nothing, for Parliamentary representation was no more fixed on the principle of comparative electorates than the representation of Ireland is now in the House of Commons.

Corfe Castle

The temperance interest need by no means be shocked when it is said that the most interesting feature of Corfe, next to the castle, is its inn. The church does not count; for the body of it has been uninterestingly rebuilt, and only the fine tower, of Perpendicular date, remains. The inns, however, combine picturesqueness with the solid British comforts of old times and the less substantial amenities of the new. Here, looking upon the “Bankes Arms,” with its highly elaborate heraldic sign, you can have no manner of doubt as to what family is still paramount in Corfe, and I think, perhaps, that to shelter behind so gorgeous an achievement even reflects a halo upon the guest; while if the “Greyhound” can confer no such satisfaction, its unusual picturesqueness, with that charming feature of a porch projecting over the pavement and owning a capacious room poised above the comings and goings, the commerce and gossipings of the people, can at least give a visitor the charm of what, although an ancient feature of the place, is at least a novelty to him.

The three cylindrical stone columns of plethoric figure which support this porch and its room are more generally useful than the architect who placed them here, some two hundred and eighty years ago, probably ever imagined they would be. He devised them for the support of his gazebo above, but more than twenty generations of Wessex folk have found them convenient for leaning-stocks, and the comfortable support they give has further lengthened many a long argument which, had all contributing parties stood supported only by their own two natural posts that carry the bodily superstructure, would have been earlier concluded. The progress of an argument, discussion, narration, or negotiation under such unequal conditions is to be watched with interest. Time probably will forbid one being followed from beginning to end; but to be a spectator of one of these comedies from the middle onwards is sufficient. The length it has already been played may generally be pretty accurately estimated by the state of weariness or impatience exhibited by that party to it who is not supported by the pillar. The “well, as I was saying” of the one enjoying the leaning-stock, discloses, like the parson’s “secondly, Dear brethren,” the fact that the discourse is well on the way, but the same thing may be gathered by those out of earshot, in the manoeuvres of the less fortunate of the two, the one who is supporting his own bulk. He stands upright, hands behind his back, while swaying his walking stick; then he leans his weight to one side upon it, first (if he be a stout man, whom it behoves to exercise caution) carefully selecting a safe crevice in the jointing of the pavement, as a bearing for the ferule of his ash-plant; then, growing weary of this attitude, he repeats the process on the other side, changing after a while to the expedient of a sideways stress, halfway up the body, by straining the walking stick horizontally against the wall. Then, having exhausted all possible movements, he takes a bulky silver watch from his pocket, and affects to find time unexpectedly ahead of him; and when this resort is reached the spectacle generally comes to a conclusion.

But it is time to follow Ethelberta into the castle:—

“Ethelberta crossed the bridge over the moat, and rode under the first archway into the outer ward. As she had expected, not a soul was here. The arrow-slits, portcullis-grooves, and staircases met her eye as familiar friends, for in her childhood she had once paid a visit to the spot. Ascending the green incline and through another arch into the second ward, she still pressed on, till at last the ass was unable to clamber an inch further. Here she dismounted, and tying him to a stone which projected like a fang from a raw edge of wall, performed the remainder of the journey on foot. Once among the towers above, she became so interested in the windy corridors, mildewed dungeons, and the tribe of daws peering invidiously upon her from overhead, that she forgot the flight of time.”

The ruins that Ethelberta and the “Imperial Association” had come to inspect owe their heaped and toppling ruination to that last great armed convulsion in our insular history, the Civil War, whose two greatest personalities were Charles I. and Oliver Cromwell. Until that time the proud fortress had stood unharmed, as stalwart as when built in Norman times.

The history of Corfe before those times is very obscure, and no one has yet discovered whether the first recorded incident in it took place at a mere hunting-lodge here or at the gates of a fortress. That incident, the first and most atrocious of all the atrocious deeds of blood wrought at Corfe, was the murder of King Edward “the Martyr,” in A.D. 978, by his stepmother, Queen Elfrida, anxious to secure the throne for her own son. The boy—he was only in his nineteenth year—had drawn rein here, on his return alone from hunting, and was drinking at the door from a goblet handed him by Elfrida herself when she stabbed him to the heart. His horse, startled at the attack, darted away, dragging the body by the stirrups, and thus, battered and lifeless, it was found.

Built, or rebuilt, in the time of the Conqueror, Corfe Castle was early besieged, and in that passage gave a good account of itself and justified its existence, for King Stephen failed to take it by force or to starve the garrison out. How long he may have been pleased to sit down before it we do not know, for the approach of a relieving force caused him to pack his baggage and be off. Strong, however, as it was even then, it was continually under enlargement in the reigns of Henry II., Henry III., and Edward I., and had a better right to the oft-used boast of being impregnable than most other fortresses.