West Bay, Dorset

West Bay, originally known as Bridport Harbour, is a small harbour settlement and resort on the English Channel coast in Dorset, England, sited at the mouth of the River Brit approximately south of Bridport. The area is part of the Jurassic Coast, a World Heritage Site.

The harbour at West Bay is not a natural landscape feature and it has a long history of having been silted up, blocked by shingle and damaged by storms, and each time repairs, improvements and enlargements have subsequently been made. The harbour has been moved twice: it was originally inland, then was moved to the coast beside the East Cliff, then was moved again along the coast to the west, where it is located today.

The previous main commercial trade of the harbour—exporting Bridport's ropes and nets—declined in the second half of the 19th century. When the railway arrived in 1884, attempts were made to provide the settlement with the facilities of a resort, and today West Bay has a mixed economy of tourism and fishing.

History

thumb|left|East Beach and East Cliff. Before the mid 18th century, the harbour and river mouth were near the base of the grassy slope

Bridport historically needed a harbour to export its principal products, rope and nets. Originally the harbour was about inland, close to the town, and its exit to the sea—the river mouth—was east of its current position. The Anglo-Saxons and Normans struggled to keep the harbour open because the river mouth repeatedly silted up and was blocked by shingle from Chesil Beach, so eventually a system of sluices was devised to help keep it clear. The toll was a market privilege granted to him for three years as a result of his petition that finishing the construction would not be possible without aid. After completion in 1395 a customs officer was employed full-time as trade grew.

Shipbuilding yards were set up west of the new harbour. They constructed a variety of vessels including frigates, cutters, schooners, brigantines, barques and fishing smack. The first registered launch was the 270 ton brig Adventurer in 1779, the last was the Lilian exactly a century later. The largest launch was the 1,002 ton Speedy in 1853. In 1823, to accommodate further increases in trade, the basin of the harbour was enlarged eastwards and the old harbour gates were replaced by a sluice. As well as exporting Bridport's ropes, the harbour also imported raw materials such as gravel, coal and timber. Despite these improvements however, trade at the harbour had begun to decline. Bridport's rope and nets were in less demand, and sailing ships were being supplanted by steam-powered vessels. as part of an effort to rebrand the harbour as a resort. Local businessmen—including the archaeologist Augustus Pitt Rivers and the Earl of Ilchester—funded the extension. Subsequently, they established the West Bay Building Company to build villas and lodging houses for visitors. Only a terrace of ten lodging houses—Pier Terrace—was completed, designed by the Arts and Crafts Movement architect Edward Schroeder Prior in 1885. In 1942, because the terrace had an appearance reminiscent of some northern French ports, West Bay was used as a training ground for the Dieppe Raid. The terrace remains a prominent feature of the harbourside.

thumb|Outdoor theatre at The Mount, West Bay, Dorset in the early 20th century

Between 1919 and 1930, coinciding with increased car ownership and personal mobility, new housing was built on the hillslope to the west of the harbour, on the landward side of West Cliff. The railway line between West Bay and Bridport closed to passengers in 1930, and operated for goods services only until its final closure in 1962. The station however was restored in the 1980s, and two old railway coaches have been installed on a short length of relaid track. The new west pier is named the Jurassic Pier. The scheme extended the facilities of the harbour, with a new slipway and outer harbour. This has enabled the harbour to be used on the 50% of days when southerly swell conditions occur, which previously was not possible. For elections to the council, West Bay is in the Bridport electoral ward.

At the parish level, West Bay is mostly within the South ward of Bridport Parish, though small areas also lie within the parishes of Symondsbury and Burton Bradstock. The parish authority for Bridport is Bridport Town Council, which is responsible for supplementing local government services and promoting and representing the town. The South ward is represented by nine councillors. There are beaches and cliffs on either side of the harbour. The beaches were previously of a similar size—in terms of their seaward extent—but now East Beach is considerably larger, due to accumulation of finer sediment. and forms one end of Chesil Beach, a barrier beach which extends southeast for toward the Isle of Portland.

The cliffs to the east of the harbour are composed of Bridport Sand Formation and Inferior Oolite, while immediately to the west they are Frome Clay (Upper Fullers Earth) and Forest Marble. The Bridport Sands deposits were laid down in the Toarcian Age toward the end of the Early Jurassic; they are arranged horizontally with clear banding visible alternating between harder and softer material. The Frome Clay and Forest Marble of the West Cliff are younger and were formed in the Bathonian Age of the Middle Jurassic. The section of the West Cliff closest to the harbour has been engineered as part of coastal defence management; large protective boulders on the foreshore are backed by a sea wall, promenade and artificial grass-covered slope. The 18th-century construction of the harbour piers interrupted the natural transport of protective sediment along the shore, reducing the size of the West Beach and enabling the sea to more easily cause damage. The West Cliff is subject to the non-marine processes of slipping and mass slumping, caused by the clay sliding over lower layers and possibly exacerbated by faults within it.

In 2019, a 1,000-tonne cliff fall at East Cliff was caught on the Environment Agency's CCTV. A group of walkers were nearby at the time but were not injured.

Economy

West Bay is a centre for fishing, tourism (focused on boats and the beach) and geology.

The West Bay area has a number of local caravan and camping sites, as well as hotels and B&Bs, both in the bay area and the surrounding villages such as Burton Bradstock. The West Bay harbour area has many kiosks serving various types of menus, including traditional fish and chips, often with locally caught fish. Near the harbour area are three pubs, each serving food. The Station Kitchen is a restaurant in the old West Bay station which includes a World War One ambulance train carriage.

The Bridport and West Dorset Golf Club, situated on top of the east cliff, has a full 18-hole course.

The West Bay Discovery Centre is a small museum located in the historic (grade II listed) former Methodist Church telling the history of West Bay.

Filming location

West Bay beach was used in the introduction to the BBC television series The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin and for location filming in the television series Harbour Lights. The town, harbour, and beach were used as locations in The Navy Lark and the 2013 ITV series Broadchurch. The West Bay and Bridport area experienced an increase in visitor numbers following transmission of Broadchurch; in one survey of sixty tourism-related local businesses, over three-quarters of respondents stated that trade had increased in 2013, and nearly half of these attributed this to Broadchurch. Very short portions of the second and third series were also filmed in the area.

West Bay, Dorset

History

Economy

Filming location

Literary reference

See also

References

External links