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(Bridport Harbour)

West Bay is Bridport’s harbour and lies about 1.5 miles south of the town centre. It acquired its name from the railway station, which was built in the 1880s and still remains, although the railway line has been closed since the 1970s.

For centuries West Bay was a trading port and shipbuilding centre.The harbour with its piers and sluice gates at the mouth of the River Brit was constructed in 1744 and improved to its present basic layout in 1823-5. From time to time the sea defences have been strengthened to deal with the pressures of coastal erosion and storms, most recently in 2002-5, when its new piers were constructed.

The great storm of November 1824, when nearly the whole harbour and village were submerged, many ships were lost at sea, and the valley was flooded right up to the town, is now thought by some experts to have been a tsunami.

Today West Bay remains a picturesque fishing harbour, where charter boats take anglers out to catch mackerel and a rich variety of other fish in deeper waters. The new slipway provides excellent access to the outer harbour for day pleasure craft, including diving boats. Diving and Sea Kayaking are increasingly popular sea sports, while the harbour is the venue for water polo, a long established West Bay tradition.

Bridport is one of the gateway towns to the Jurassic World Heritage Coast, and West Bay, on the South West Coastal Path, is one of the most spectacular points from which to view this amazing coastline, with its golden cliffs to the east, looking along the Chesil Beach to Portland Bill, and to the west the great sweep of Lyme Bay with views of Golden Cap, Lyme Regis, Beer Head and beyond.

West Bay is a fantastic place for wildlife, with year-round interest for the visitor. A good variety of seabirds can be seen including shearwaters, skuas, petrels, terns and one of Dorset's largest colonies of fulmars on the East Cliff. Other marine wildlife sightings can include bottlenose dolphins and basking sharks. Through the summer months colourful wildflower displays adorn the Brit Valley and the coastal pathways. West Bay is one of the best localities in Britain to watch the visible migration of land birds. In the autumn, the passage of wagtails, hirundines, larks, pipits, thrushes and finches is spectacular with over a quarter of a million birds regularly passing through.

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