Freshwater Bay is a bay on the east side of the

Isle of Portland An isle is an island, land surrounded by water. The term is very common in British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct fr ...

Dorset Dorset ( ; archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the unitary authority areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Dorset. Covering an area of , ...

, England, south from Church Ope Cove and between the villages of Wakeham and Southwell. It forms part of the

Jurassic Coast The Jurassic Coast is a World Heritage Site on the English Channel coast of southern England. It stretches from Exmouth in East Devon to Studland Bay in Dorset, a distance of about , and was inscribed on the World Heritage List in mid-Decembe ...

. Freshwater Bay takes its name from a freshwater spring which emerged at the bottom of the cliff. An Admiralty pumping station was built on the clifftop in the 19th century for supplying fresh water to the naval base and to the harbour's breakwaters during their construction. Cheyne House was built for the attendant of the station. The man-made tunnel for the pumped water was known as Cheyne Tunnel, and in 2011 this was blocked by a rockfall. For many decades and through to the second half of the 20th century the bay was in regular use by commercial fishermen. The Great Southwell Landslip, Britain's second largest recorded historical landslide, occurred in 1734, between Durdle Pier and Freshwater Bay, along a length of . Freshwater Bay is reputed to be one of the best places on Portland for fossil locating. The area is known to be popular for fishing, and the cliffs of the bay are also popular with rock climbers.

In popular culture

Above Freshwater Bay is Cheyne House and its grounds which were used, along with other locations across Portland and Weymouth, in the 1963 film '' The Damned''.

References

{{Jurassic Coast Isle of Portland Jurassic Coast