Corfe Castle (village)

Corfe Castle Town Hall is a municipal building in West Street, Corfe Castle, Dorset, England. The town hall, which is currently used as a museum, is a Grade II* listed building.

The Isle of Purbeck is a peninsula in Dorset, England. It is bordered by water on three sides: the English Channel to the south and east, where steep cliffs fall to the sea; and by the marshy lands of the River Frome and Poole Harbour to the north. Its western boundary is less well defined, with some medieval sources placing it at Flower's Barrow above Worbarrow Bay. John Hutchins, author of The History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset, defined Purbeck's western boundary as the Luckford Lake steam, which runs south from the Frome. According to writer and broadcaster Ralph Wightman, Purbeck "is only an island if you accept the barren heaths between Arish Mell and Wareham as cutting off this corner of Dorset as effectively as the sea." The most southerly point is St Alban's Head (archaically St. Aldhelm's Head). From 1974 to 2019, the whole of the Isle of Purbeck lay within the local government district of Purbeck, which was named after it. The district extended significantly further north and west than the traditional boundary of the Isle of Purbeck along the River Frome. Following the abolition of the district on 1 April 2019, the Isle now lies within the Dorset unitary authority area. In terms of natural landscape areas, the southern part of the Isle of Purbeck and the coastal strip as far as Ringstead Bay in the west, have been designated as National Character Area 136 - South Purbeck by Natural England. To the north are the Dorset Heaths and to the west, the Weymouth Lowlands.

Corfe Castle is a fortification standing above the village of the same name on the Isle of Purbeck peninsula in the English county of Dorset. Built by William the Conqueror, the castle dates to the 11th century and commands a gap in the Purbeck Hills on the route between Wareham and Swanage. The first phase was one of the earliest castles in England to be built at least partly using stone when the majority were built with earth and timber. Corfe Castle underwent major structural changes in the 12th and 13th centuries. In 1572, Corfe Castle left the Crown's control when Elizabeth I sold it to Sir Christopher Hatton. Sir John Bankes bought the castle in 1635, and was the owner during the English Civil War. While Bankes was fighting in London and Oxford, 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 slighted on Parliament's orders. Owned by the National Trust, the castle is open to the public and in 2018 received around 237,000 visitors. It is protected as a Grade I listed building and a Scheduled Monument.

Corfe Castle Hundred was a hundred in the county of Dorset, England, containing only the parish of Corfe Castle. It was sometimes also referred to as Corfe Castle Liberty.

Mortons House Hotel in Corfe Castle in Dorset, is a building of historical significance and is Grade II* listed on the National Heritage List for England. It was built in 1590 and was the home of several notable families over the next four centuries; it is now a hotel.

Corfe Castle railway station is a railway station located in the village of Corfe Castle, in the English county of Dorset. Originally an intermediate station on the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) branch line from Wareham to Swanage, the line and station were closed by British Rail in 1972. It has since reopened as a station on the Swanage Railway, a heritage railway that runs from Norden station just north of Corfe Castle to Swanage station. Corfe Castle is on a railway line connecting Wareham and Norden.

Norden railway station is a railway station located one mile to the north of the village of Corfe Castle, on the Isle of Purbeck in the English county of Dorset. It is situated on the Swanage Railway, a heritage railway that operates over the former London and South Western Railway line from Wareham to Swanage. Norden is the northern terminus of the railway's steam service from Swanage, and an intermediate stop on the railway's diesel hauled service that connects Swanage with the national rail network at Wareham station. The site is the home of the Purbeck Mineral and Mining Museum, a museum about the history of ball clay mining in the Isle of Purbeck. The museum includes the relocated header building of one of the areas last underground mines, together with a reconstruction of an underground gallery. There is also a section of the narrow gauge railway that served the clay industry, and a collection of narrow gauge rolling stock. A large car park, provided by Purbeck District Council, allows the station to function as a park & ride facility for the tourist centres of Corfe Castle and Swanage.

The Purbeck Mining Museum exists to preserve and interpret the historic extractive industries in ball clay mining in the Isle of Purbeck. The museum is located adjacent to Norden station on the Swanage Railway and is open from the end of March to the end of September on weekends, some weekdays and Bank Holidays. A redundant mine has been relocated to Norden with a railway laid around the site, a new engine shed and the restoration of wagons that worked on the lines around Norden. One of the future aims of the museum is to construct a new building at Norden to house Secundus, a 2-foot 8 inch steam loco, wagons and other artefacts not on display at present. It will also contain a library and education centre. It is planned to extend the narrow gauge railway to the other side of the Swanage Branch line to land owned by the group via Bridge 15. In 2010 a structural engineer surveyed Bridge 15, a skew bridge over the Swanage Railway. The condition of the bridge was good for a "temporary" bridge built in 1885. Since then the Bridge has been involved in a serious incident in which it has been severely damaged.

Bucknowle Farm is the site of a Romano-British settlement and a Roman villa, located one kilometre southeast of Church Knowle and one kilometre southwest of Corfe Castle village in Dorset, England (grid reference SY95368146). It is about seven kilometres south of Wareham and approximately nine kilometres west of Swanage in the heart of the Isle of Purbeck. A number of Romano-British sites have been discovered and studied on the Isle of Purbeck. The Romano-British villa complex found at Bucknowle Farm is the first substantial villa to be found south of the Purbeck Hills. It was excavated between 1976 and 1991. The first signs to its existence were unearthed in 1975 as fragments of pottery were found in a field. The excavations, that subsequently lasted until the summer of 1991, conclusively revealed a complex of domestic and farmstead buildings. Moreover, beneath these, a more complicated system of Iron Age and early Roman Age habitation was uncovered.There is a camping site within the grounds of Bucknowle Farm.

Bucknowle Roman villa is a Roman villa in Dorset, England. It is located within a camping site within the grounds of Bucknowle Farm.

Blashenwell Farm Pit (grid reference SY952805) is an 11.4 hectare geological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Dorset, United Kingdom, notified in 1954. It is of scientific interest because the tufa at the site provides a detailed record of molluscan biostratigraphy and environmental history during the early- and mid-Flandrian interglacial.

Scoles Manor, also known as Scoles Farm House, is former farmhouse and a Grade II* listed building, two miles from Corfe Castle in Dorset, England. It is believed to be the oldest continuously occupied building in Corfe Castle parish. The main part of the house was built in 1635 and there is a medieval structure attached which has been dated to 1280 and which was either a chapel or a small hall house. The name Scoles is derived from the family called Scoville or Scovil who originally came from the village of Escoville in Normandy. There are records of Scovilles living here in the 13th and 14th centuries but the property was then passed to their female descendants (including Dacombes and Colsons) before being bought in c. 1810 by John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon.