In a year when global news remained gloomy, Swanage and Purbeck mainly offered lots of good news – helped by a glorious spring and summer of sunshine!
While there were closures and farewells, there were just as many new arrivals and welcomes, big name celebrities continued to flock to the area to film and to relax, and as always, Swanage.News kept you informed.
Swanage Bay Sauna opened overlooking Swanage’s seafront
Stories that made the headlines in 2025…
January
After a series of unexpected delays, Swanage Bay Sauna finally opened its doors in January, and quickly became a major draw for sea swimmers and wellbeing enthusiasts. The redwood sauna cabin was originally planned to open in summer 2024, but was held up by the need for an upgraded electricity supply. However, the sauna on Shore Road soon established itself as an uplifting addition to the town, encouraging people to embrace the sea in every season – and even opened on New Year’s Eve to welcome 2026 in Scandinavian style!
There was both a welcome return and a sad farewell at RSPB Arne when BBC cameras returned for a fourth and final time as Winterwatch broadcast live over four consecutive nights. It marked the end of a two-year partnership between the BBC and RSPB Arne, as presenters Chris Packham, Michaela Strachan and Iolo Williams showed off its year round appeal to almost 3 million viewers an episode. While Springwatch moves to County Down in 2026, the impact of the BBC’s presence in Dorset has been lasting, with wildlife tourism now an increasingly important draw for the region.
Sadly, Farmer Palmer’s Farm Park near Wareham had to end its red deer feeding experience after 18 years, following stricter enforcement of the Zoo Licensing Act. Updated Defra requirements meant that public interaction with the animals would require a full zoo licence costing more than £4,000. The deer safari had long been a highlight, offering children a tractor ride and the chance to hand feed the tame animals through a fence, but the business had to take a difficult decision to end the experience, and rehome the deer.
A public inquiry took centre stage in January 2025 as the Sandbanks Ferry sought approval for another round of inflation linked toll increases on the key crossing between Sandbanks and Studland. A six-day government inquiry was controversially moved from Studland village hall to the Port of Poole, causing outrage. The company argued it had to address a £3.9 million shortfall in its ferry replacement fund to afford a new vessel by 2032. It took most of 2025 for the planning inspector to decide that it could raise fares annually in line with inflation, but not charge people to drive along Ferry Road, nor increase tolls for pedestrians, motorcyclists and cyclists by 75 percent, nor reduce discounts on bulk ticket purchases.
Actor Edward Fox led the campaign to save Wareham’s level crossing
February
Actor Edward Fox led hundreds of local residents at Wareham in February 2025 in their fight to retain a ground level rail crossing in Dorset. Rail users of all ages, many in wheelchairs, backed a growing campaign to keep the right of way across the rail line which cuts Wareham in two. Edward Fox, a frequent user of Wareham station who lives locally, said Network Rail showed a criminal disregard in vowing to close the crossing in 2038. Within weeks, Dorset Council announced a U-turn to oppose any closure of the manned crossing which it pays £120,000 a year to staff, and a month later Network Rail also backed down – people power had won the day!
Swanage’s former Salvation Army church was put up for sale in February at £350,000 – and sparked huge interest. The Victorian church building has a prime town centre location, a rich history, and stunning architecture. The entrance off High Street is over a stone walkway bridge and through an arched church door, while light is let in through three arched Gothic lancet windows. As the former church is not on the National Heritage List, all sorts of uses were suggested for it, from an art gallery to residential. It’s currently sold subject to contract.
Studland was included in plans for a legally enforceable ban on antisocial behaviour in Dorset, in a bid to stop disposable barbecues being lit on heathland, and illegal camping on beaches. In April 2022, Dorset Council brought in new Public Space Protection Orders for areas of open land, like Wareham Forest and Lulworth Cove, but didn’t include most of Purbeck. However, when the original orders came up for renewal in 2025, Dorset Council began a public consultation in February proposing to include Studland beaches and Purbeck Heath, and following public support, confirmed them in July.
A £150,000 makeover of the transport hub at Station Approach, Swanage, finally arrived in February, making the concourse more accessible and safer for pedestrians. After years in the planning stages, work started in January 2025 to narrow the exit from Station Approach to slow traffic. There was also a better defined pedestrian pathway across the entrance to the Co-op car park, and more accessible footpaths with tactile paving.
One of Little Sea’s four new beavers explores unfamiliar surroundings
March
A fire at Dino’s Takeaway in Swanage left the popular eatery badly damaged. The blaze, which started accidentally in a fat fryer in the ground floor kitchen, rapidly filled the premises with thick black smoke, turning the inside of the takeaway into a blackened shell. Police were forced to close the High Street while firefighters in breathing apparatus worked for several hours to bring the fire under control. Afterwards, Swanage residents rallied around the business, with a fundraising appeal launched to help support the owners.
One of the most high-profile Purbeck stories of the year unfolded at Studland in March when four beavers were released into the wild just days after the government granted a long awaited licence to release beavers into open countryside in England. Intense national media attention followed as two breeding pairs were transported from Scotland in metal crates and released into wetland habitat around Little Sea as 50 invited VIP guests watched. It was widely covered across the national media, with the BBC’s Six O’Clock News broadcasting live from an area described as ‘beaver heaven’.
The collapse of a local festival company was one of the most disappointing cultural stories of 2025, as the company behind Wilkswood Reggae Festival went into liquidation, forcing both the Reggae Festival and the Jurassic Dance Festival to be cancelled. Around 3,000 people had been expected to attend each of the events at Wilkswood Farm near Langton Matravers in August, with up to 50 acts booked. The decision followed what organisers described as an unsustainable financial position, reflecting wider pressures on the UK festival scene.
A proposal to redevelop Studland’s Knoll House Hotel into a five star luxury resort was dismissed by the government’s planning inspector after a six year saga. The current hotel has a good reputation as a traditional family resort, but is beginning to show its age. Owners Kingfisher Resorts wanted to demolish most of the 1930s building and instead build a luxury hotel with 30 rooms, 18 apartments and 26 villas, swimming pools, a spa centre, jacuzzi, fitness studio, sauna and restaurant. However, planning inspector Hayden Baugh-Jones ruled that he believed the harm to the environment outweighed the economic benefit of the £60 million redevelopment.
Jeremy Wren, Louise Hodgson and Chris Hughes, new organisers of Swanage Pirate Festival
April
April opened with a story which was no joke – as buccaneers from land-locked Birmingham stepped forward to save Swanage Pirate Festival after it was in danger of folding. Colin and Dawn Honey had run the much-loved event after it was relaunched following Covid lockdown in 2022, but had to step down from their roles due to ill health. As no one else came forward to pick up the cutlasses, Louise Hodgson and Jeremy Wren stepped into the breach, despite living 190 miles from the Dorset coast in Birmingham. With just two months to make all the arrangements, the two-day festival at the end of May 2025 was still a huge success.
Popular actor Robson Green finished three weeks of filming along the Jurassic Coast from Studland to Lyme Regis in April for a new TV series which was broadcast in December 2025. Robson was spotted in Swanage, Studland, Durlston, Corfe Castle, Kimmeridge and Lulworth on several occasions while filming for the programme World’s Most Amazing Walks. It was the first time he has walked the Jurassic Coast and he said he was stunned by its beauty. The Grantchester star was on location in Durlston Country Park when he was surprised as runners in the Jurassic Express half marathon passed through – including an inflatable dinosaur and a rhino!
Fears were raised that Purbeck’s puffin colony at Dancing Ledge may be heading for extinction, after an attempt to use cameras to find out why they are failing to breed proved inconclusive. It was hoped that a scheme to position cameras on the cliffs near nesting areas would reveal what was happening, but despite capturing extensive footage, the reason remains a mystery. Without knowing the reason why the nesting puffins aren’t producing any surviving chicks, it may be impossible to intervene to save the colony, whose numbers have fallen from 85 in 1958 to just three nesting pairs.
Generous fundraisers in Purbeck delivered the perfect Easter gift to Swanage teacher Tiff Randall and her baby Hazel. Plumber Jack Guilfoyle had spent months building his young family a perfect home, but died unexpectedly in February 2025 at the age of just 30 after a heart operation. As he had a pre-existing heart condition he had been refused life insurance on his Wareham home, leaving Tiff struggling to make monthly payments and look after her new born baby. But his family set up a Go Fund Me page, which raised more than £70,000 to keep Tiff and Hazel in the house that Jack built for at least the next four years.
Large crowds gathered for the VE day 80th anniversary at Swanage bandstand
May
The weather had been sunny in Swanage since Easter and by the time the 80th anniversary of VE Day came around, glorious sunshine made the commemoration of Victory in Europe towards the end of World War Two a vintage day. Swanage residents enjoyed a day of festivities including a concert at the bandstand, the signing of the Armed Forces Covenant, and the lighting of beacons to mark 80 years since Germany’s surrender after nearly six years of war. A concert at Swanage bandstand included a rousing chorus of Edward Elgar’s Land of Hope and Glory and concluded with the Last Post and two minutes of silence to remember those who had died in war.
Also this month, a memorial plaque was unveiled at the Swanage War Memorial to five boys from Forres School, who were killed in an explosion on Swanage’s North Beach in 1955 caused by a World War Two land mine. The boys lost their lives when an old land mine they had found buried in the sand exploded as they investigated it. Forres School, later Purbeck View School, is now likely to be redeveloped as a housing estate, and there were fears that a tribute to the boys there may be lost, until former Forres schoolboy Seb Warner raised the funds to create a lasting tribute to Robin Ardagh, Richard Birch, Jeremy Dennis, David North-Lewis and Jason Oliver.
A passionate supporter of Swanage and in particular the Dorset town’s heritage railway, councillor Bill Trite died unexpectedly at the age of 77. Responsible for saving Swanage Railway from financial collapse in 1991, elected three times as mayor of Swanage, and a driving force behind the creation of The Swanage School in 2014, Bill will be sadly missed.
After a six month investigation into the tragic deaths of three elderly residents in one night at a Swanage care home, Dorset Police finally announced that the case was a tragic coincidence. Any further action was ruled out into the events of an October 2024 night at the Gainsborough care home in Ulwell Road, which led to the evacuation and two month closure of the care home. Although it was originally suspected that carbon monoxide might have been involved, the police investigation concluded that a 74 year old man and a woman aged 86 died of natural causes within hours of each other, and a 91 year old man died on the same night of a kidney infection.
Square and Compass landlord Charlie Newman contemplates the future of Woodhenge at Worth Matravers after 10 years
June
A major project to create a national trail around the entire coast of England took a step closer in June as work was completed to restore the South West Coast Path from Kimmeridge Bay to South Haven Point at Studland. The public footpath will be part of the King Charles III England Coast Path, a 2,700 mile route which could be completed by spring 2026. Work had already begun to improve the 21 miles of footpath in Purbeck when part of the pathway collapsed in a landslide at Hounstout near Chapman’s Pool in April 2024. It required a new route around the dramatic landslip and at the same time, signs were updated, old stiles, fencing and gates replaced, and new steps and handrails installed.
The historic St Nicholas of Myra Church in Worth Matravers was rededicated by the Bishop of Sherborne after years of restoration work to repair the roof, involving a huge fundraising effort by locals. The 900 year old church was found to have rot in the rafters, along with damaged stone slates and corroded Victorian nails which held the heavy Purbeck stone slates in place. A repair bill rose to more than £600,000, but after three years of major conservation work and serious fundraising in Worth Matravers, the Norman church was reopened by the Right Reverend Karen Gorham, Bishop of Sherborne.
Purbeck’s most unusual landmark celebrated its 10th anniversary in June, but the long term future of Woodhenge in Worth Matravers, Dorset, is now in doubt. Woodhenge was created in a day opposite the Square and Compass pub by landlord Charlie Newman and his chief cider maker at the time, Nick Gray, to mark Midsummer morning 2015. Within days they were at the centre of a planning battle as Purbeck District Council demanded that the wooden homage to Stonehenge either got planning permission or was torn down. It was eventually reprieved after 1,500 people signed an online protest, but now longhorn beetles have made a meal of the wooden structure, and one of the uprights has collapsed.
Purbeck thatcher Nathan Yates created a perfectly rainproof roof at The Globe
July
After a month long battle, Dorset Council abandoned its plans to enforce a booking system at Swanage recycling centre following huge protests. Dorset Council climbed down from its controversial policy of forcing Purbeck residents to book half hour slots at household tips in Swanage and Wareham after an outraged response from locals. Less than a week after saying it was determined to launch the booking system at all 10 of its tips, the council had to make a U-turn and allow the modern, efficient tips at Swanage and Wareham to continue to operate as usual, without any need to book slots.
One of only two thatched buildings in Swanage, The Globe Inn, got a smart new look in July, but the work revealed a bit of a surprise. The cellar room is a former barn which has been part of the Bell Street pub for the past 220 years and was long overdue a new thatch when a group of friends and neighbours took over the tenancy in July 2024. They hadn’t realised quite how overdue, until Purbeck thatcher Nathan Yates stripped the roof back to basics to install fireboards, and discovered that the oldest layer of thatch was original and dated back to the 17th century.
A waterfront bungalow at Arne, one of only three homes in the whole of Purbeck on the shores of Poole Harbour, was put up for sale in July for the first time ever for a cool £4 million. Shipstal, with its own slipway, boathouse and mooring, is right next to a quiet beach 30 minutes’ walk from RSPB Arne which has been named amongst the best in the country. The three bedroom home, which has since been sold, has a large terrace to make the most of its spectacular vista across the harbour with views out to Brownsea Island and a protected nesting site for exotic spoonbills.
Swanage Carnival 2025 began at the end of July with an incredible scoop – a flypast by the amazing Red Arrows. With Bournemouth Air Show cancelled, the RAF’s aerobatic team had an unfilled date in their diary, and Swanage’s carnival committee jumped at the chance to extend an invite to the Red Arrows to return for the first time since 2017. Despite black clouds and a brief rain shower during the opening day of carnival, the Red Arrows performed breathtaking manoeuvres over Swanage Bay and enthralled a crowd of thousands.
Star of The Kingsman films, Mark Strong (right) was at Sir Sam Mendes’ party in Studland, along with Andy Serkis (left) and Jeremy Irons (third from left)
August
The biggest birthday bash of the year was thrown in Studland in August, and locals were left starstruck after bumping into Hollywood A-list film stars who arrived to celebrate the 60th birthday of Oscar winning director Sir Sam Mendes. Among guests to the party at Harry Warren House were Tom Cruise who arrived by helicopter, Nicole Kidman, Andy Serkis, Jeremy Irons, Mark Strong, and at least three of the stars of Sir Sam’s latest project, four biopics of the 60s band The Beatles.
As the scorching summer continued, heath fires were deliberately started in Purbeck and volunteers were pressed into action to rescue as much of the wildlife as they could from the burnt landscape. Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service declared a major incident in early August as hundreds of firefighters, including crews from Swanage and Wareham, tackled two large fires at Newton Heath near Studland and at Holt Heath near Wimborne. More than 90 hectares of heathland which was burned was home to sand lizards, slow worms, smooth snakes, and adders. The Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust set about collecting any surviving reptiles to release them into nearby unaffected heathland.
Swanage’s popular Sunshine Walk finally reopened after being closed for 10 months following a landslip due to building work which destroyed an historic wall in West Durlston. The incident, in September 2024, followed excavation work on a building site, formerly St Mary’s Convent and school, which had undermined the wall’s foundations. Some residents in West Durlston lost their water supply when a long stretch of the six foot tall Purbeck stone wall cracked and fell, bursting a water main and damaging the footpath. Luckily no one was injured, although the footpath was closed for safety reasons until all the rebuilding work was completed.
A plea went out in August from the directors of a Dorset charity looking for lost memories of Purbeck’s past captured on cinefilm. The Windrose Rural Media Trust has been collecting rural heritage on film since it was founded in 1984 and has a growing archive with remarkable footage of market towns, farming life, seaside holidays and local traditions dating back more than a century. Much of the collection is stored at the Dorset History Centre in Dorchester, and among its gems are rare colour images of Purbeck farming in 1942 and Swanage beach scenes from the 1930s. Although the collection covers all of Dorset, Purbeck has fewer films than many places.
Sir David Attenborough filmed his final location shots at Studland for a new film about the state of the world’s oceans
September
After years of controversy, work began at Middle Beach in Studland to clear away old man-made sea defences which were put in place to slow coastal erosion. Despite protests from local residents, the government’s policy of managed retreat for areas like Studland meant the gabions – metal baskets filled with stones – were never going to be replaced once they had started to rust away. Cranes moved onto the beach in September and became an attraction in their own right for a while, and autumn storms saw the sea begin to reclaim land. The National Trust’s vision for the future is to allow the area to naturally become a sandy cove once again, providing a better habitat for wildlife.
Sir David Attenborough’s last ever location shot, filmed at Studland and Old Harry rocks in Dorset for the documentary Ocean, was used as a call to action by Planet Purbeck and Greenpeace. Their joint event, Protecting Our Oceans, was held in Swanage in September to explore the challenges and threats facing our seas, and used the Discovery Channel film Ocean, narrated and presented by Sir David Attenborough, to raise awareness. Sir David filmed the opening and closing scenes in Purbeck and said they would be his final location shot when the documentary was released on his 99th birthday, in May 2025.
Swanage RNLI celebrated its 150th anniversary in September with a gathering of friends, volunteers and locals, along with a moment of reflection to remember all those rescued at sea since the town got its first lifeboat in 1875. The original Swanage Lifeboat Station was built following the shipwreck of Wild Wave on Peveril Ledges, which highlighted the need for a lifeboat in the area. It was opened on 16th September 1875 at a cost of £525 for the boathouse and slipway; the first lifeboat was called Charlotte Mary and cost £389. The current station was rebuilt on the same site and opened in 2016 to accommodate the new larger Shannon class lifeboat.
TV crews and former Match of the Day host Gary Lineker brought Corfe Castle to a halt in September when they descended on the village and imposed a media blackout after taking over the castle for a day. Secrecy was supposed to surround Operation Tango as security guards were posted at every entrance. But the game was given away as Gary Lineker was spotted in the Greyhound’s pub garden during a lunchtime break for filming and it became apparent that he was on a first-day shoot for his new game show, The Box. The series, in which celebrities are packed in yellow boxes and sent to different locations, where they face physical and mental challenges, will be aired on ITV early in 2026.
Celebrity Traitor Jonathan Ross visited Days Park to help Swanage Town and Herston Football club Under 11 girls to raise money for equipment
October
October began with an exhibition of Dorset Council’s plan to meet government targets on building new homes, but its proposed allocation of land for development proved controversial especially in environmentally protected areas like Purbeck. In Swanage, the draft Local Plan identifies areas of land to build 417 new homes, but it’s unlikely that number will be achieved, as some of the land allocated is designated as a village green and protected from development. Prospect Fields behind Prospect Crescent in Swanage is earmarked for housing and probably offers the best chance for developers to build homes classed as affordable, but many residents are against building on green field sites.
Work began on a £250,000 facelift for a well known pub near Wareham, which included a controversial name change. The Silent Woman pub has since reopened as The Angel, its original name from when it first opened in Wareham Forest 400 years ago.
A phenomenal response by Swanage to a ‘Raise the Roof’ appeal by The Mowlem quickly raised enough money to cover the cost of fixing its leaky roof. With wet weather threatening to cancel shows at The Mowlem, new executive director Kate McGregor said she was blown away by the generosity of the local community. Kate arrived to take up her new role in July 2025 and top of her to-do list was to get the old leaky flat roof fixed. Things came to a head when a leak in a corridor switched on the cinema lights during a showing of La Traviata. The target of £10,000 was reached within weeks and work to add a permanent weather proof layer to the existing roof will start in early 2026.
Celebrity Traitors star Jonathan Ross made a surprise visit to Swanage Town and Herston Football club to support its under 11 girls’ football team. Jonathan, who owns a home in Swanage, signed some prizes to help boost a fundraising raffle for new equipment, and brought along a message of support for the girls personally recorded for them by England football star Chloe Kelly and wishing them all the best for their footballing careers. Jonathan spent almost an hour chatting to the players and staff, signing autographs for them and giving some insights about his time on the BBC TV programme Celebrity Traitors – a week before he was voted off the show as players finally twigged that he was one of the cloaked baddies.
BBC One’s Antiques Road Trip crew visited The Old Curiosity Shop in Corfe Castle
November
Results of a survey which may help decide the future of Swanage Green Seafront were published in November. In order to stabilise a subsiding section of the Swanage seafront, more people said they preferred a £6.5 million enhanced option to save the area from collapse over a basic £4.5 million scheme. But the result was close – 45 percent to 43 percent, with a significant 12 percent of 1,469 people surveyed saying they didn’t know which scheme they preferred. There was also concern over the cost of both of the proposed options. Swanage Town Council has yet to make its decisions on the preferences, but still hopes to meet the project timetable with construction planned to start in autumn 2027.
Saturday night customers at The Antelope in Wareham were left stunned when top comedian Michael McIntyre unexpectedly walked through the door, wearing a sandwich board advertising his quiz show The Wheel. With a 12-strong TV crew, Michael posed for selfies, performed a promotional piece to camera and wished one of the locals happy birthday on his way out. He then dropped in at Sandford holiday park to join a bingo session, and also turned up at a house in Wareham where a family was watching his new series of The Wheel – a sketch expected to be featured in Michael McIntyre’s Big Show, which returns for a tenth series in January 2026.
An antiques shop in Corfe Castle featured on the BBC’s Antiques Road Trip show in November following a visit earlier in the year from two experts. Seasoned road tripper Raj Bisram visited The Old Curiosity Shop in Corfe Castle in March 2025, along with newcomer to the show Bee Harford, and the two searched for treasures which they could later sell at auction – with profits going to the BBC’s Children In Need appeal. But while the third star of the show is usually the classic car driven during the road trip, it never appeared in Corfe Castle – Bee and Raj arrived in the village by steam on the Swanage Railway.
As autumn rains began to fall, new earth bunds, scrapes and leaky dams started popping up in the Purbeck countryside as part of a scheme to reduce the flooding risk along the Swan Brook, which flows down to the sea at Swanage. The first phase of work, funded by a £325,000 grant from the Environment Agency, was completed by the National Trust. It aims to slow the flow of rain water from hills and fields, along the ditches, and into the local river network. But rather than using concrete, the project used natural flood management techniques like low earth bunds similar to embankments, scrapes – shallow seasonal ponds – and tree trunks across ditches to create leaky dams.
Ian Messinger, Swanage’s Mr Christmas, was overwhelmed by the response to an appeal for gifts
December
December began with good news, as an urgent appeal to raise £25,000 to save Swanage Jazz Festival was successful, securing its future in 2026. The festival, a highlight of Swanage’s musical calendar for more than 30 years, made a loss of around £15,000 in 2025 after selling 150 fewer weekend stroller tickets than expected. That forced organisers to take short term loans to pay all of the performers, but following a plea for money to pay back the loans before the end of December, donations from festival fans flooded in. As the appeal hit its target, disaster was averted and Swanage Jazz Festival will now definitely take place in July 2026.
Another appeal, this time for toys to give away to Swanage families feeling the pinch at Christmas, also proved just how generous Purbeck folk are. Ian Messinger, who runs the popular Christmas shop at Herston Yards Farm, invited locals to donate good quality toys and games that their children had outgrown, to gift to other families in the run up to Christmas. The appeal proved successful beyond all dreams as almost 1,000 gifts, many of which were brand new, flooded in. And after a generous offer by Nathan Turner of The Ship Inn, space in what used to be the Old Brick Pizza Co became the centre for Santa’s Wish 2025.
December also brought news of an attempt to reverse the dramatic decline of young Atlantic salmon in the River Frome, which flows into Poole Harbour at Wareham. The Frome is a chalk river which should have ideal conditions for salmon eggs to hatch during winter and spring, but numbers have fallen by 70 percent in 20 years. Wareham farmer Ian Baggs is now hoping to slow the dramatic dive by changing methods of farming on his land to prevent silt running off the fields and into the river where it can smother and suffocate salmon eggs. Experts hope that a series of changes to river management can help thousands more eggs hatch and young salmon survive.
A high tech hunt is being carried out with drones on the British Army base at Bovington Camp to find a unique piece of military history – the buried remains of the world’s first tank. The prototype, known as Mother, was developed in 1915 to turn the tide in World War One, and is believed to have been melted down and recycled at the Tank Museum during the scrap metal drives of World War Two. But a letter suggesting that Bovington Army personnel may have secretly buried Mother to save her from the scrapyard has started a treasure hunt like no other. Drones using ground penetrating radar to scan the land will be deployed in 2026, the search team is hopeful – and Swanage.News will be ready to report the results!
Can you remember what happened the year before?
- Here’s the review of 2024!
