Durlston Castle

The Durlston Castle was built on the hill above Durlston Head Durlston Bay within the Country Park Durlston. The Durlston Country Park is located south of Swanage on the Isle of Purbeck, in the county of Dorset on the south coast of England.

Prehistory

In the area around Swanage There are numerous historical quarries extending mainly along the cliffs to the south. In these quarries of Portland stone, Purbeck stone and Purbeck marble was quarried.

John Mowlem (1788-1868) and his nephew George Burt (1816-1894), both from Swanage, were successful stone dealers and builders in London. They wanted to develop the site into a prosperous place Swanage.

Location

In 1862 George Burt bought the hill to Durlston Head. In this area, some quarries, where his company broke with the limestone were. He wanted to develop this area a tourist attraction, so he built in 1887 a small castle on the hill, a Folly. Durlston Castle was designed by the architect G. R. Crickmay from Weymouth and 1886-1887 built by W. M. Hardy entirely of local stone. The " castle " was built as a restaurant for visitors to its site. In a side wall of the castle a sundial and two stone tablets are attached. The panels are labeled, have made ​​various statistics and the course of the tides. The sundial is designed as a world clock.

Burt also manufactures the Great Globe, a 40 -ton globe, which is three feet in diameter. In the world map of the world engraved according to the findings of 1880.

The trails around the castle and the Great Globe surrounded with cast iron bollards that were brought from London. Around the entire property, there are other stone slabs with quotes from Shakespeare and the Bible, as well as maps to the English Channel and the United Kingdom, and other facts about the biological evolution of the Earth.

Restaurieurung

The owners of Durlston Castle changed regularly after the second world war, until finally the Dorset County Council bought it in 1973. Since mid-April 2010, the Castle is fully restored. The costs amount to 5.5 million pounds. The castle is the Jurassic Coast Visitor Centre house and will be open to the public ..

From Orcombe Point, in the west, to the Isle of Purbeck, in the east, a stretch of coast that has been declared as the first natural landscape in England by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site stretches. Durlston Country Park Durlston Castle is part of the Jurassic Coast, it is one of the natural wonders of this world and the coast is known for its fossils.