Swanage Museum &Heritage Centre

Swanage Museum & Heritage Centre occupies a building on The Square, run as a registered charity, number 274200, staffed entirely by volunteers. The collection traces the town's shift from a working Victorian stone-quarrying port to a Victorian and Edwardian holiday resort, with exhibits on the stone trade, the Purbeck ball clay industry and the social history that came with the railway's arrival. A separate section covers the radar development carried out in Purbeck during the Second World War, drawing on original equipment and wartime accounts. Other rooms hold paintings and drawings by artists who lived in or visited Swanage, plus geological material tied to the Jurassic Coast just beyond the town. The main museum building has wheelchair access, though the linked History Centre does not, with alternative viewing arranged by request.