192 THE MARBLERS 



the port of Swanage for the water carriage of the former staple of 

 the island. But the charitable supposition will hardly be borne 

 out by actual inspection ; and though piles of stone, technically 

 called "bankers" which at present line the beach in that beau- 

 tiful bay, certainly shew but too evident traces of the quarry, 

 their size and their position are not suggestive of a highly 

 flourishing state of trade. 



Their size is unfavourable as showing the mass in the market 

 awaiting purchasers; their position, as intimating an un-re- 

 munerative trade, if it cannot command the capital requisite for 

 improving the mode in which those masses must be removed for 

 shipment. It is perhaps a not irrationally sanguine hope for one 

 to entertain, that this form of shipment is likely to become one of 

 past things ; that future quarriers, driving a more prosperous 

 trade than that which at present supplies the pocket of Swanage, 

 may consider the fashion of 1859 as a curious antiquarian study. 

 It may be that under the influence of increased convenience, it 

 will soon seem to have been an odd way of doing business to have 

 had to lead the stone in waggons to the shore — there to deposit it 

 in heaps — to cart it thence through the water to barges (with 

 the waves at times coming nearly over the horse,) — and finally, 

 to convey it in the barges to the vessels that should carry it away. 



The custom itself, so far as carts, barges, and vessels are 

 concerned, has the merit of picturesqueness ; though its parent 

 the " banker" is a woful disfigurement to the pretty shore of the 

 bay; and perhaps it may even at this moment claim the rank of 

 antiquity ; for, unless the science of carriage has gone backward 

 in Swanage, the present way of loading the vessels must be coeval 

 with the earliest beginning of the trade. 



I do not however propose now to investigate this curious prac- 

 tice, but to draw attention to the existence of the institution 

 under which the Stone trade of Purbeck is still carried on. 



The Quarriers or workers of stone, otherwise called "Marblers," 

 form a Company. Its chief officers are "Wardens, two in num- 

 ber, one of whom is appointed to act for Corfe Borough, and 

 is called the Town Warden; the other for the parts of Purbeck 

 out of the Borough, who is called the Country Warden. On 

 Shrove Tuesday, which is the great day of the company, the 



