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Ammonite fossils embedded in rocks along southwest England's Jurassic Coast. Photo: Simon Horn

England’s Jurassic Coast – journey through time from when dinosaurs roamed to Regency resorts

  • The coastlines of East Devon and Dorset have witnessed some 185 million years of history
  • The area remains fossil-filled, but is more than just a palaeontological playground
Britain

Here be not dragons, but plesio­saurs, belemnites, ammonites and other species of fish, insects, trees, ferns and grasses that have long since gone extinct.

Stretching a little over 150km along the coastlines of East Devon and Dorset, in southwest England, the Jurassic Coast was added to the list of Unesco World Heritage sites in 2001, thanks to its unique geological make-up. Some 185 million years of history are visible in the steep cliffs that plunge from headlands to the English Channel, with rock formations dating from the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods sandwiched atop one another.

It was here that the first identified remains of a dinosaur were discovered – although when 12-year-old Mary Anning unearthed the skeleton of an ichthyosaur in 1811, no one quite knew what she had found. Further excavations have revealed the skeletons of more of these powerful marine reptiles (Mary’s discovery was described as a “crocodile in a fossil state” at a 1819 auction), along with what is left of members of a great many other species. Even today, there are plenty still waiting to be unearthed.

Lyme Regis – with fossil-filled cliffs at either end of the town – is ground zero for palaeontologists, and is likely to become a more widely popular destination after the release next year of the BBC Films period piece Ammonite– the title a reference to the fossils of marine molluscs, which were known as snake stones in late-18th-century terminology. Filming began in the town in March, with Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan heading the cast in a story that revolves around Anning’s many discoveries, which would contribute to changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of Earth.

Actress Saoirse Ronan on set in Lyme Regis, during the filming of Ammonite. Photo: Alamy

Fresh from having done a little fun but largely fruitless digging of our own, my dinosaur nut of a five-year-old son, Harry, and I visit Lyme Regis Museum. Built on the site of Anning’s former home, the small but remarkably informative museum has some impressive full dinosaur skeletons, which were found nearby, and tells the town’s more modern history – ranging from the exploits of 18th-century “wreckers” who lured unsuspecting ships onto rocks in order to claim their cargoes to the men of the Home Guard who patrolled these beaches when an invasion by Nazi Germany seemed imminent.

The seafront is dominated by the Cobb, a stone wall that serves as a pier and curves gracefully out from the beach as a protective arm for the town’s modest fishing fleet and a small armada of dinghies, yachts and motor boats. More than 250 metres long and believed to date from the time of Edward I, who was king of England for 35 years from 1272, the Cobb was made famous in the 1981 film adaptation of the John Fowles novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman. It is at the end of the storm-lashed Cobb that Jeremy Irons’ Charles Henry Smithson is first entranced by Meryl Streep’s troubled Sarah Woodruff.

Within the embrace of the Cobb – the origin of the name remains unknown – fishermen’s nets, buoys and lobster pots are piled high on the dockside. A squadron of two-person sailing boats puts to sea. Seagulls wheel overhead.

A sailing boat being launched from Beer's beach. Photo: Simon Horn

Sixteen kilometres to the west, in the county of Devon, Beer has no such harbour for its fishing fleet, so a dozen or so coastal smacks are laboriously winched up high onto the village’s beach, and rolled over the pebbles on logs.

Enclosed between chalk cliffs – fossil hunting is less likely to pay off here – Beer wends its way down a narrow valley before emerging onto the seafront. The name does not derive from ale, but from the Old English word bearu, which means “grove” and referred to the wooded hillsides that once surrounded the parish. That said, it would be remiss to visit a village with such a name and not try a local brew.

We settle not at the Barrel O’Beer, on Fore Street, but at the Anchor Inn, which stands on the low cliffs where the single road leads down to the beach and has a beer garden with an admirable view out to sea. Branscombe ale is brewed in an even smaller village of that name just a stone’s throw away and the nearby Salcombe Brewery has a reputation for some impressive real ales. The southwest of Britain is at the heart of the cider industry, though, and there has been an explosion in the number of companies producing craft versions in recent years; the likes of Sandford Orchards and Burscombe Farm Cider, for example.

The Cobb at Lyme Regis. Photo: Alamy

A 20-minute ride – courtesy of the designated driver, of course – to the west of Beer is perhaps the most stylish of the seaside towns that punctuate the Jurassic Coast: Sidmouth, which retains a hint of the splendour that made this one of the most popular resorts of the Regency/Victorian era (1811-1901).

Standing in the still-green valley where the River Sid meets the sea, between the red sandstone cliffs of Salcombe Hill and High Peak, Sidmouth evolved from a sleepy fishing village into a fashionable escape from London when the royal family began to visit. The Duke of Kent and his family, including the young Princess Victoria, resided at Woolbrook Glen from the middle of 1819 until the duke’s untimely death, the following year. That property, opposite Sidmouth Cricket Club and a couple of hundred metres back from the town’s beach, is today The Royal Glen Hotel, and the exterior has hardly changed in 200 years.

A century later, author George Bernard Shaw was mobbed by admirers at his hotel on the Esplanade, local gossip suggesting he had to use the fire escape to leave. A glance at the black-and-white postcards in the town’s museum reveal that the Victorian- and Georgian-era properties lining the seafront look similar to how they did at the dawn of the 20th century, although the Sidmouth Bath’s brine baths are no more and the lifeboat station at the eastern end of the promenade has been converted into a yacht club.

Jacob's Ladder, in Sidmouth. Photo: Simon Horn

Where the coast road begins to climb High Peak, to the west of Sidmouth, is a promontory on which are laid out the public Connaught Gardens. Here, behind high walls topped by a crenellated stone construction that once served as a coastal watchtower and telegraph relay station, people come to sit and contemplate.

At the foot of the tower, a white-painted wooden staircase, known as Jacob’s Ladder, zigzags some 50 steps down to the beach. Before descending, many visitors look back along the southern English coast, to the cliffs that still hold so many pre­historic secrets.

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