Isle of Purbeck - Roman, Saxon and Norman

Roman, Saxon and Norman

A number of Romano-British sites have been discovered and studied on the Isle of Purbeck, including a villa at Bucknowle Farm near Corfe Castle, excavated between 1976 and 1991. The Kimmeridge shale of the Isle was worked extensively during the Roman period, into jewellery, decorative panels and furniture.

At the extreme southern tip of Purbeck is St Aldhelm's chapel which is Norman work but built on a Pre-Conquest Christian site marked with a circular earthwork and some graves. In 1957 the body of a 13th-century woman was found buried NNE of the chapel which suggests there may have been a hermitage in the area. In 2000 the whole chapel site was declared a Scheduled Ancient Monument. The precise function of the chapel building is disputed with suggestions that it may have been a religious retreat, a chantry for the souls of sailors who had drowned off St Aldhelm's Head or even a lighthouse or warning bell to warn sailors. Victorian restoration work of the chapel found signs that a beacon may have adorned the roof. The present cross on the roof is Victorian.

The town of Warham retains its Saxon earth embankment wall and it churches have Saxon origins. One of these, St Martins-on-the-Walls was built in 1030 and today contains traces of medieval and later wall paintings.

At Corfe Castle village is the great castle which gives the village its modern name. The castle commands the strategic gap in the Purbeck Ridge. The present castle dates from after the Conquest of 1066 but this may replace Saxon work as the village was the place where Saxon King Edward The Martyr had been murdered in 978. The supposed place of his murder is traditionally on, or near, the castle mound. Corfe was one of the first English castles to be built in stone - at a time when earth and timber were the norm. This may have been due to the plentiful supply of good building stone in Purbeck.

Sir John Bankes bought the castle in 1635, and was the owner during the English Civil War. His wife, Lady Mary Bankes, led the defence of the castle when it was twice besieged by Parliamentarian forces. The first siege, in 1643, was unsuccessful, but by 1645 Corfe was one of the last remaining royalist strongholds in southern England and fell to a siege ending in an assault. In March that year Corfe Castle was demolished ('slighted') on Parliament's orders. Owned by the National Trust, the castle is open to the public. It is protected as a Grade I listed building and a Scheduled Ancient Monument.