Chesil Beach

There have been many shipwrecks on Chesil Beach, particularly during the age of sail. The beach was particularly dangerous within the English Channel, as it forms an extended lee shore during south-westerly gales. A ship coming up the Channel had to clear Portland Bill to be safe, but the wind and tide would be pushing it northwards into Lyme Bay. When sailing ships were common, a strong string of coastguards were based along the beach, with lookouts and cottages at Chiswell, Wyke Regis, Chickerell, Langton Herring, Abbotsbury, East Bexington, Burton Bradstock and West Bay. At present there are no manned Coastguard lookouts along the beach, with coverage provided when required from the…

From West Bay to Cliff End the beach is piled up against the cliff. At Cliff End a hollow forms behind the beach and at Abbotsbury a stretch of saline (or brackish) water called the Fleet lagoon begins. This is up to 3m in depth. Located in the Upper Fleet, within Abbotsbury Swannery, is Bum Point, and adjacent to this is an artificial island known as Tern Island, which was created to provide a nesting site for common terns. The lagoon is a designated bass nursery area, and the species are frequently seen on an underwater camera connected to the Chesil Beach Visitor Centre. Accordingly, angling for the fish is only permitted in the lower Fleet area, from the Narrows to Ferrybridge, and only…

In the novel The Well-Beloved: A Sketch of a Temperament by Thomas Hardy he calls Chesil Beach Deadman's Bay. The Fleet and Chesil Beach feature in the novel Moonfleet by J. Meade Falkner (1898), in which the village of Moonfleet is based on the real village of Fleet. Despite being the setting for the novel, it was not used as a location for the film adaptation Moonfleet (1954) which was filmed entirely in Hollywood, California. Ian McEwan's Booker Prize nominated novel On Chesil Beach is, primarily, set in a hotel overlooking Chesil Beach. In the final sections of the book, there are scenes on Chesil Beach itself. This was adapted into a 2017 film of the same name. The cover of the 1980 UK…