Durlston's globe

On the coast in the Purbeck Hills in Dorset is a splendid erection - a giant globe dated 1891 that was placed atop the cliff.


Around it are quotations from some of history's greats, including Shakespeare. But there is also this unattributed, yet familiar-sounding quotation.

It reads: "Let prudence direct you, temperance chasten you, fortitude support you, and justice be the guide to all your actions."

The cliffs have a long history of being mined for stone.

Here is a brief history from the Durlston website...

A Victorian Enterprise

Durlston was owned and farmed by various farmers and landowners but, in 1863, George Burt purchased a significant part of Durlston and a new era began. George Burt was born in 1816, and worked locally as a stone mason before moving to London, at the age of 19, to work for his uncle John Mowlem. Using his wealth, Burt played a major part in the plans to transform Swanage from an 'old world village' to a fashionable seaside spa. It was not until George Burt retired in 1886, that he turned his energies to developing further his estate with the newly commissioned Durlston Head Castle as its centrepiece. The Castle was constructed by a local builder, William Masters Hardy, and despite its traditional appearance, an iron frame lies behind its stone cladding. The Castle has always been used as a restaurant of sorts but, in 1890, the upper floor was used briefly as a signal station by Lloyds of London. Fired by a Victorian zeal for learning and the natural world, George Burt set about transforming the rest of his estate. The most spectacular of his many creations was the Great Globe. George Burt's developments were not confined to building work. His estate was landscaped and planted with a variety of plants from around the world and it is worth noting that 50 men were employed to maintain Burt's ' New Elysian landscape'. George Burt's plans for his estate were not entirely altruistic. Various plans were laid for a major residential development at Durlston and 88 plots of freehold building land were offered in 1891. Such schemes continued well into the 1920s but met with little success. The Victorian era was also a great age of fossil collecting. Durlston Bay, already famous for its geology, attracted the interest of W.R. Brodie whose initial finds in 1854 led to the large scale excavations by Samuel Beckles in 1857. According to the London Illustrated News he found ' 27 species of marsupial mammal about 16 of which are totally new to science'. The arrival of the railway in Swanage in 1885, and later transport developments including a steady growth in car ownership, saw Durlston becoming increasingly accessible to visitors. The sea views, Tilly Whim Caves, Durlston Castle and Great Globe were then, as now, major attractions.

George Burt The Large Globe (1890) Durlston Castle (1906)