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The Great Globe, with Durlston Castle making its presence known in the background. Normally I would avoid taking a shot with someone in the frame, in this instance though it was intentional, to give an idea of the size of the globe. The person is reading the inscriptions on the wall.


To the west of Swanage, a mile or so from the town is the 261 acre Durlston Country Park. This is set on the cliff top, and on the cliff edge at 139 feet above sea level you will find 'The Great Globe'. This is a 40 ton 10 foot diameter Portland stone, globe of the earth.


A Swanage Boy
John Mowlem was the man responsible for this artifact, and also for a lot of the other unusual architecture dotted around Swanage.
Mowlem was born in Swanage of a poor family in 1788, and after starting work as a boy labourer in the local stone quarries he left to work in London as a mason for a sculptor of the time called Westmacott. From these humble beginnings he went on to found, what has become over time, one of the United Kingdom`s biggest civil engineering firms, Mowlems.

Error Correction

George Burt who was Mowlem's nephew as well as his partner for a time, was responsible for the globe, and NOT Mowlem as I state above.

This article is due to be re-written shortly - P Tuck 5/03/04

Construction
The globe was constructed around 1887 at Mowlem's yard in Greenwich London, an area that has modern day links with follies, the Millennium Dome. The reason of its construction in London, rather than in Swanage where the stone came from, is probably due to the skilled labour that was available in London for this kind of work. This was because it was constructed in fifteen separate parts, and assembled when on site back at Durlston.

Placed around the globe are to be found eight stone seats placed at the eight cardinal and inter-cardinal points of the compass. Also there are various stone tablets with details of the moon and earth, and works by the poets and writers of the time. On the wall of the nearby Durlston Castle is to be found further evidence of trying to 'educate the masses', with a large stone sundial and two tablets, one giving the various clock times around the world, whilst the other tells us about the tides, and the how curvature of the earth affects the distance we see to the horizon.
An interesting feature of the globe in the present time, is the fact that several of the countries have either ceased to exist, or have changed their boundaries, in the intervening years.


Recycled Artifacts
Durlston Castle is only a restaurant, and always has been, since it was built about a year before the globe. Its constructor naturally being John Mowlem, who enlisted the services of a Weymouth architect, G.R. Crickmay. The rest of Swanage's oddities are not follies however, they are it seems the 'leftovers' from a 19th century modernization of London that was under way at the time.
Among the things that found their way to Swanage were mosaic floors from the Palace of Westminster, the facade from the Mercer's Hall at Cheapside, now the front of the Town Hall, even George Burt`s - his later partner - house in the High Street is built from left overs from the construction of the Albert Memorial. Various lamp standards, and even an archway from Hyde Park Corner, have also found a new home in the seaside resort.

  

Durlston Castle



Visiting:-
The Country Park is signposted from the centre of the town. Although it is possible to park in the town and walk, it is a very steep climb. Admission is free, but parking is charged for.


Additional Photographs
These are full size and take longer to load.

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