On Swanage, Dorset, in 1906, Sir Frederick Treves; and Paul Nash, 1936

From Highways and Byways in Dorset (Macmillan, 1906; pages 188-189)

Swanage, as it was in 1906, and 35 years before that.

"In those days it could still claim to be the "quaint, old-world village" that Charles Kingsley loved. Now it is the scene of a feverish struggle between rival builders, who fight to cover the land with copious red brick in as little time as possible. What can be done to spoil a characteristic village the founders of Swanage the Up-to-Date have done...It only needs a gasometer on the beach to complete the sorry renaissance. Old Swanage has gone; the features which made it unique among the Southern sea towns have been swept away, so that in a few more years it will be indistinguishable from the host of "developed" red-brick coast resorts on the shores of England...Swanage devotes itself body and soul to a hearty multitude called by the townfolk "the steamer people" and by the less tolerant "the trippers"".

Sir Frederick Treves, 1906.

Pennie Denton, on Paul Nash's Dorset Shell Guide (1936) and Swanage:

"Only in Swanage, he found, had man supplanted nature, and with disastrous results, for here was 'Perhaps the most beautiful natural site on the south Coast, ruined by two generations of "development" prosecuted without discrimination or scruple'".

From Seaside Surrealism, Paul Nash in Swanage (2002).