Freshwater Bay is a bay on the east side of the

Isle of Portland The Isle of Portland is a tied island, long by wide, in the English Channel. The southern tip, Portland Bill, lies south of the resort of Weymouth, Dorset, Weymouth, forming the southernmost point of the county of Dorset, England. A barrier ...

Dorset Dorset ( ; Archaism, archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to the north and the north-east, Hampshire to the east, t ...

, England, south from

Church Ope Cove Church Ope Cove is a small secluded beach on the sheltered eastern side of the Isle of Portland in Dorset, southern England, and is part of the Jurassic Coast. It is found close to the village of Wakeham. The beach has many unusual features for t ...

and between the villages of

Wakeham Wakeham is a hamlet near the village of Easton, in Tophill on the Isle of Portland in Dorset, England. It is situated between the Straits part of Easton, and Pennsylvania Castle. As with the rest of Portland's villages and settlements, Wakeh ...

and Southwell. It forms part of the

Jurassic Coast The Jurassic Coast, also known as the Dorset and East Devon 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 ins ...

. 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