After the retreat of the last ice age, the landscape would have been a quiet, undisturbed woodland filled with Oak, Holly, Hazel, Ash, Elm, Alder and Lime trees.

For the next several thousand years, the first Mesolithic people inhabited the Purbeck Heaths, hunting and gathering from the land

By the early Neolithic era, people inhabiting the area started clearing the woodland as they moved towards a more settled lifestyle, allowing heather to dominate and heathland take over.

Vast amounts of woodland was now being cleared over thousands of years to use for fire wood and creating space for farming and settlements. Bronze Age field systems have been discovered in the area, originally growing spelt or barley. However, as these cereals sapped huge amounts of nutrients from the ground, the area soon became pasture for livestock instead.

Bronze Age barrows (graves) were created in mound shapes on top of the ground to bury well-respected or elite members of the community. They were made from layers of turf on top of the ground to bury the elite and well-respected members of the community, Evidence of these barrows are dotted across the landscape for us to see today.

During the Iron Age, people started settling in the Poole Basin and started extracting from the land and sea for industry and commercial opportunities; collecting saltwater to create a salt industry, excavating clay for pottery creation and trading both from now submerged jetties on the south side of the harbour. Salt was produced to preserve food such as pig meat, which allowed the start of a cured meat trade for the area

Human activities created the mosaic landscape we see today; chopping down the trees for firewood, trampling and inhibiting new trees to grow, excavating large areas of turf and peat for fire fuel

The vast landscape of nutrient poor scrubland being continually trampled and disturbed allowed rare plant life and nature to thrive

The local clay industry grew with Black Burnished Ware pottery being made and traded around the time of the Roman Conquests, resulting in local Purbeck clay being found Antonine Wall in Scotland and German frontier.

Rare ball clay excavated from under the Purbeck Heaths was ideal for making the increasingly popular tea cups and tobacco pipes. By the late 1800’s, this clay was being supplied to Josiah Wedgwood who mixed it with Devon clays and ground flint to make Queen’s ware

Dorset’s first railway was created by Benjamin Fayle, a worker of Josiah Wedgwood’s nephew for horse and cart (not engines). This plateway ran from Norden to Middlebere, dramatically increasing the amount of clay transported for export from these pits to the harbour edge by 35% over the subsequent six years. This railway was used for almost a century.

The first steam locomotive was introduced.

The network of tramways and tracks are still visible today across the heathland landscape e.g. Poole Harbour Trail and Sunnyside. Clay is still extracted and exported today but via the rail and road, not by tramways and over sea.

Brownsea Island and Arne acted as decoys for the explosive Cordite factory at Holton Heath during the second World War.

People unintentionally spent thousands of years creating and then maintaining the heathland habitat, however people also caused its rapid and extensive destruction over the 20th century. Increased urbanisation, reclaiming heathland for farming and planting of pine plantation forest after World War II resulted in big losses of heathland.

Opening of the Bournemouth-Swanage Motor Road and Ferry. This was set up as the UK’s first ‘motorway’ specifically to connect motor traffic from Bournemouth and Poole to Swanage and Wareham via the ferry and Ferry Road. This would have had a huge impact on the number of visitors, tourists and traffic to the area.

Captain Cyril Diver and other volunteers meticulously surveyed, mapped and recorded the wildlife of the heath and dune system on the Studland peninsula, providing us with extensive information on the habitats, animals and wildlife at the time which can be compared to current day surveys.

The Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty was designated. Its mission is to conserve, enhance and protect the landscape it encompasses, which includes the precious Purbeck Heaths.

RSPB purchased land at Arne to safeguard heathland species such as the smooth snake, sand lizard and Dartford Warbler.

The ‘Wild Purbeck partnership’ was set up and managed by the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty team to conserve and enhance the habitats in the area at a landscape scale in partnership with land owners, governmental departments, conservation organisations.

RSPB acquired Hyde’s Heath, a former pine plantation, on the Arne peninsula, with plans to restore this area back to heathland. Annual 'pull a pine' Christmas events helps in this restoration.

The Purbeck Heaths was declared a ‘super’ National Nature Reserve, bringing together seven landowners and over 3,000 hectares of heathland to be managed as one landscape for the benefit of the rare, important nature and habitats

Boggy and cold wetland environments such as those found on the Purbeck Heaths, store more carbon per hectare underneath the ground than any other above above/below ground habitat, including forests and rainforests!