Walk 2 - Old Harry Rocks

An easy walk along broad paths near the cliffs to another celebrated locality, taking in some of the historic centre of the village en route: 35 minutes each way.

Local Walks
Agglestone
Old Harry Rocks
Ballard Down
Swanage
Little Sea
Fishing Barrow
Rempstone Forest
Ower Quay
Corfe Castle

From starting-point 1 (see Setting Out), turn left along the lane; turn right when it reaches the main road, and look out for a shady path a little further on the other side of the road, just in front of a board advertising the Bankes Arms, that descends steeply beside a more-or-less dried-up river-bed. This provides a pleasantly secluded short-cut as an alternative to the road. Follow it to a gate where it emerges onto a road junction, where you continue along the road curving round ahead to the right.

On your left you pass the Manor House that George Bankes built in the 1840’s, now the Manor House Hotel, oddly Gothick in appearance and furnished with a splendid terrace lawn where a disloyal guest could take tea whilst admiring the expanse of sea beyond. Follow the road as it skirts round to the left, passing the Bankes Arms and descending to where the beach path branches off to the left in front of a intrusively commodious public lavatory. Go past the latter; the road turns to the right, but to the left you will see a signposted path leading upwards. Follow it, passing to admire - and wish you owned - the wonderfully situated cliff-top house on the left. From here on the path is unambiguous, emerging on to a long and remarkably straight stretch that plunges through a patch of woodland (Studland Wood) that is being managed by traditional coppicing, and where wild garlic can be seen growing beside the path on the left.

You emerge on the cliffs, with the Old Harry Rocks of Handfast Point straight ahead. This complex promontory is the counterpart of the Needles on the Isle of Wight, that you should be able to see fifteen miles away across the water. In between lies a band of chalk whose weathering has generated the arches and columns that you see. The first isolated wall of chalk is No Man’s Land, separated from Old Nick’s Ground on the mainland by St Lucas’ leap: beyond lies Old Harry himself, a cylindrical pinnacle, and beyond that are the remains of Old Harry’s Wife, who largely collapsed into the sea in 1896; if you look at old prints you will see how erosion has been altering the appearance of Handfast Point over the centuries. Old Nick’s Ground was the site of Studland Castle, built by Henry VIII and finally claimed by the sea in 1770.

If you are feeling energetic, walk along the cliffs a little to the right, as close to the edge as you dare, and enjoy a series of vertiginous perspectives, terrifyingly evocative of the clifftop scene in King Lear. Return as you came, at least until you get to the end of the path, at the public lavatory. You might like to take the opportunity of seeing Studland’s parish church, St. Nicholas. Follow the road that rises to the left, looking for an opening on the right that is the start of a footpath to the church.

Just before you reach the building, look out for a headstone near the porch commemorating a remarkable man. Sergeant William Lawrence ran away from Studland to join the army in 1805, and served with the South American Expedition, and with Wellington in the Peninsular Wars and at the Battle of Waterloo. In 1828 he returned bringing with him his French wife, Clotilde, and together they set up as the tenants of the New Inn, renamed the Wellington Inn; it was situated just a few yards up the road from the present Bankes’ Arms. Lawrence’s Memoirs have recently been edited by Eileen Hathaway and can be bought locally. The Ferguson family maintain the headstone.

St. Nicholas’s robust early Norman architecture is striking: perhaps particularly the chancel arches and the vaults of the chancel and sanctuary. Outside, look for the grotesquely carved heads under the eaves, especially on the south side.

Leave the churchyard by continuing along the path by which you entered; eventually it reaches a side-road, where you turn left and eventually regain the main road.