Swyre Head

*the other Purbeck one is Nine barrow Down

ENCOMBE ESTATE

The land was given in 948 A.D. to the Abbess of Shaftesbury by King Edred. It seems to have remained the property of successive Abbesses until the reign of Henry VIII who dissolved the Monastery.

In the middle of the sixteenth century the land was bought by Robert Culliford of Devon who built a house on the site of the present one. The Cullifords only prevented Oliver Cromwell from confiscating the estate by providing some men to help with the destruction of Corfe Castle. The family owned it until 1734 when it was sold to George Pitt of Stratfield Saye (distant relative Pitt the elder & younger), who gave it to his youngerson John. John Pitt demolished the house and built the present one. His son William Morton Pitt sold the house and thesurrounding land in around 1807 to John Scott 1st Earl of Eldon, who was then the Lord Chancellor, for£56,000.

In 2002, Charles McVeigh an American merchant banker, purchased the estate for £16 million from the Scott family.

In 2009 it was sold to James Gaggeros who owned Gibraltar Airways (sold to Easy Jet) for £20M. Richard Branson and Kylie Minogue are reported to have been interested.

THE OBELISK

Erected by Lord Eldon in 1835 to commemorate the ennobling of his elder brother, Sir William Scott, as Baron Stowell.

THE LOSS OF RAF SWORDFISH Mk 1 K5985 ON MARCH 18, 1938

On the afternoon of Friday, March 18, 1938, a student on the torpedo course at the Torpedo Training Unit at RAF Gosport took off with two passengers "along for the ride"at 2.15pm in a Mk1 Swordfish K5985 on a training cross-country flight to Roborough, near Plymouth. They seem to have encountered low cloud approaching the Purbecks and tried to duck under it, passing low over Orchard Hill Farm at 2.45pm, clipped the top of the trees in Polar Wood - leaving sections of the aircraft in the tree tops - and nose-dived into the steep hillside some 300 yards away. The Bristol Pegasus engine detached and rolled further down the valley.All three on board were probably killed instantly, despite the brave efforts of a local people who tried to get near to the wreckage but were beaten back by the heat.

THE LOSS OF RAF LIBERATOR MK IX RY-3 JT985 ON JUNE 15, 1945

ON the morning of Friday, June 15, 1945, with the war still raging in the Far East, the unarmed Liberator JT985 of No 232 Squadron took off from RAF Holmsley South in the New Forest, on the first leg of its long flight to Palam, India. The first refuelling stop was scheduled to be at RAF Castel Benito, near Tripoli inNorth Africa.

There were 5 crew and 22 airmen being sent out as urgently needed groundcrew at Palam. At 7.45am,shortly after crossing the coast outbound, the aircraft reported a loss of fuel pressure and the crew were turning back to carry out a precautionary landing at Holmsley South.