1. Langton Stone Museum: Situated behind St George’s church in Langton Matravers, The Purbeck Stone Museum provides an excellent historical overview of the local stone industry with numerous carved artefacts alongside fascinating photographs, documents, and old tools and machinery. It is open every day except Sunday from 1st April until 30th September between 10am and 12 noon and from 2pm until 4pm.

2. Sheep: Valentine Quinn (Tom’s Field campsite)

3. Sheep: Valentine Quinn (Tom’s Field campsite)

4. Letter-carved Poem Boulders: Anna Bowen (Tom’s Field campsite) The lettering was designed in response to the setting of the stones, in free form and without compromise. Design elements are taken from fossils (in the use of heavy tool marks), of dry stones in a wall (letters resting against each other, in their varying combinations of height and shape), and of weathering conditions of the coast (the rounded forms like sea-worn pebbles)

5.Burngate Stone Centre Sign: Valentine Quinn

6. Out of the Depths Plinth: project for local young people Carlotta Barrow. Tutors, Alan Davis, Roger Mordaunt and Paul Stockley. Lettering Valentine Quinn

7. Exmoor pony’s head: Sarah Moore (Eastington), Limousin cows head (Spyway) These works for the National Trust are drawn from observations and drawings of the cows and ponies on the Purbeck downland. Sarah carves by hand, liking to ‘feel her way’ around the stone. The tactile quality of the stone is important to her and she wants her work to be felt physically as well as emotionally. Sarah now teaches on carving courses in Italy and Bournemouth.

8. Woodhenge: Charlie Newman (Square and Compass pub)

9. Dinosaur: Valentine Quinn (Square and Compass Pub)

10. Square and Compass: Michael Bizley, Roy Ford, and Alan Davis (Square and Compass pub) Created in the summer of 1992, this massive square and compass is fashioned from old wooden railway sleepers.

11. St Nicholas gate posts: Valentine Quinn (Worth Matravers) St Nicholas, the patron saint of sailors, fishermen and ships and also of children is depicted on one side with a ship and on the other carrying a child. Inspired by chess pieces, these figures are carved in Purbeck stone by Valentine Quinn, a professional local stone-carver

12. Owl gate posts: Michael Bizley (Worth Matravers) These Purbeck stone owls are guardians of the house and are intended to have a forbidding aspect. In ancient Greece, the owl was the sacred image of Athena. Michael Bizley is renowned for his carvings in marble and Purbeck stone, many of which are in private collections.

13. Stone Poems: Anna Bowen (Emmetts Hill) Four boulders with letter-carved inscriptions.

14. Sun: Valentine Quinn (Kingston Road, Langton)

15. Corfe Castle signs: Valentine Quinn

16. The Pelican in her Piety: Corfe Castle (Simon Kidner, John Challis and Carlotta Barrow) Barrow) During recent conservation work in the castle an ancient carved pelican was discovered, high on the east wall of the keep. This ancient religious symbol shows the apparent selfsacrifice (the pelican is believed to wound itself to feed its young) appropriate to represent Christ, the redeemer. The carving with wings back and head down, representing a cross.

17. Corfe Castle: Mason’s house project, Roger Mordaunt, Jigger Stockley

Driving route - turning for Studland section

19. Studland Cross: Treleven Haysom (Studland) As part of European Architectural Year 1975, the former Rector of Studland, Canon O’Hanlan, proposed that a new stone cross be set up on an ancient circular stone base situated not far from the church. This piece of local heathstone exhibited a mortise which suggested it may have held a cross many years ago, possibly from a time when Christians marked their meeting places before erecting buildings. This idea led to discovering more about pre-Norman Conquest crosses, of which only fragments survive in Dorset, such as a piece of shaft at Todber. A frequent motif on the best surviving examples, thought to signify the ‘Tree of Life’, is a looping plant containing birds and sometimes a human figure in its branches. The design of the first side of the new cross was much influenced by the Ruthwell Cross and another in the V & A Museum. DNA, common to all life, had recently been discovered and its double helical shape, reminiscent of the Tree of Life, hence complementary to the first side, became the linking framework on the opposite side. Ears of Corn represent agriculture, the basis of modern civilisation. A butterfly symbolises the natural world, threatened by modern technology, in the form of the Concorde aircraft. Human creativity is represented by the cello and the darker aspect of our nature by the bomb. Decoration on the sides includes a form of pelta geometry and the devil in chains. We can hope! Nick Usborne assisted in carving the Devil and the Pisces symbol. Bishop Snow, then resident in Corfe Castle, dedicated the finished work.

20. Jurassic Life: Jonathan Sells (Lulworth Cove) Award-winning local sculptor and stone carver, Jonathan Sell’s work is both figurative and abstract. It shows his deep love of nature and his amusing observations on the human condition. Born to carve, his monumental sculptures can be found in many public places including the Jurassic Life in Lulworth Cove.

21. Figures: Christopher Haysom (1939-89): (Wilkeswood Farm) Christopher studied at the Royal College of Art and later taught at the Central School of Art. The stone heads are from a series of ‘Singing Heads’. In his garden in Acton, he created a stone amphitheatre leading to his studio, itself a sculptural form.