Lulworth Cove

Lulworth Cove from the east

Lulworth Cove, from the north

Lulworth Cove is a remarkable semi-circular cove on the Dorset coast near the village of West Lulworth. It forms part of the "Jurassic Coast" World Heritage Site along the coast here. It opens up into English Channel. The calm waters of the cove are often dotted with fishing boats and yachts riding at anchor.

Lulworth is one of the world's finest examples of a circular cove. It is a tourist location with approximately 500,000 visitors a year, of whom about 30% visit in July and August. Close by to be seen also are the rock arch of Durdle Door, a "little brother" cove, Stair Hole, and the other sights and sites of the Jurassic Coast.

The television programme Seven Natural Wonders featured Lulworth Cove, and a wonder it is indeed; a beautiful curve bitten out of the cliffs. It is a calm, sheltered anchorage, shallow but with plenty of draught for the boats which moor here. Its mouth on the open English Channel is marked by two spits projecting from either side, and beyond the spits there are hazardous tides to catch the unwary.

Literature and popular culture

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, a thoroughly Dorset man knew the cove well. In Far From the Madding Crowd Hardy has Lulworth Cove appear as "Lulstead Cove". Here Sergeant Troy ill-advisedly takes a swim and on passing beyond the mouth of the cove he is dragged out to sea by the notorious tides here and assumed drowned.

Later, in 1920 Hardy wrote At Lulworth Cove a Century Back, a tribute to Keats, who landed once at Lulworth in 1820 when let an unknown young man:

Had I but lived a hundred years ago
I might have gone, as I have gone this year,
By Warmwell Cross on to a Cove I know,
And Time have placed his finger on me there:

"You see that man?"- I might have looked, and said,
"O yes: I see him. One that boat has brought
Which dropped down Channel round Saint Alban's Head.
So commonplace a youth calls not my thought."

"You see that man?" - "Why yes; I told you; yes:
Of an idling town-sort; thin; hair brown in hue;
And as the evening light scants less and less
He looks up at a star, as many do."

"You see that man?" - "Nay, leave me!" then I plead,
"I have fifteen miles to vamp across the lea,
And it grows dark, and I am weary-kneed:
I have said the third time; yes, that man I see!

"Good. That man goes to Rome - to death, despair;
And no one notes him now but you and I:
A hundred years, and the world will follow him there,
And bend with reverence where his ashes lie."

Film and television

• Television adaptations of Far From the Madding Crowd have used the Cove for the scene of Troy's disappearance.
• Nuts in May, 1976 TV film by Mike Leigh used Lulworht Cove as a location
• The Doctor Who serial The Curse of Fenric has it too.

Geology

The cove has formed because there are bands of rock of alternating resistance running parallel to the shore (a concordant coastline). On the seaward side the clays and sands have been eroded away. A narrow band (less than 100 feet) of Portland limestone rocks forms the shoreline. Behind this is a narrow (less than 150 feet) band of slightly less resistant Purbeck limestone. Behind this are 1,000–1,200 feet of much less resistant clays and greensands (Wealden clays, Gault and Upper Greensand).

Forming the back of the cove is a 800-foot-wide band of chalk, which is considerably more resistant than the clays and sands, but less resistant than the limestones. The entrance to the cove is a narrow gap in the limestone bands. This was formed by a combination of erosional processes by wave action, glacial melt waters and the processes of weathering. The wide part of the cove is where the weak clays and greensands have been eroded. The back of the cove is the chalk, which the sea has been unable to erode as fast as it does not dissolve in the sea acids.

The unique shape of the cove is a result of wave diffraction. The narrow entrance to the cove ensures that as waves enter they bend into an arced shape this is shown clearly on the photograph.

180° panorama overlooking Lulworth Cove, Dorset, England, as seen on an October afternoon.

Stair Hole

Stair Hole

Stair Hole, less than half a mile away, is an infant cove which suggests what Lulworth Cove would have looked like a few hundred thousand years ago. The sea has made a gap in the Portland and Purbeck limestone here, as well as small arch. The sea has made its way through to the Wealdon clays and begun eroding them. The clay shows obvious signs of slumping, and is eroding very rapidly. Stair Hole shows one of the best examples of limestone folding (the Lulworth crumple) in the world, caused by movements in the Earth's crust (tectonics) millions of years ago. Folding can also be seen at nearby Durdle Door and at Lulworth cove itself.

Conservation, tourism, education and management

West Lulworth acts as a gateway to this part of the Jurassic Coast. As well as the cove, across Hambury Tout (the large chalk hill to the west) is Durdle Door, a natural arch. To the east there is a fossilised forest. Lulworth is also close to Kimmeridge, famous for its rocky shore and fossils. The sea floor in and around the cove yields fossils, and oil sands beneath the sea bed form the largest British oil field outside the North Sea area, and contain the highest quality oil in Europe. Geologists and geographers have been interested in the area since the beginning of the 19th century, and in the 1830s the first serious study of the area took place. Since then the area has drawn Geology students from all over the world.

Purbeck suffers from trampling because of its many visitors and erosion from the sea. Management has been put in place to stop the coastline from being ruined, such as wooden steps and fences. These will keep people to a certain path and steps will reinforce the ground.

In 2001 the coast was granted World Heritage Site status by UNESCO. Experts at UNESCO have been working on preserving the shape of Lulworth Cove. Lulworth was one of a number of gateway villages on the coast with a Heritage Centre—part visitor centre, tourist information and natural history museum—which in 2002 received 418,595 visitors. Most of the area is privately owned by the Lulworth Estate, an estate held by the wealthy landowning family; The Welds.

Land to the east is owned by the Ministry of Defence and used for tank training, only open on weekends and holidays. The coast and land to the north and around the village is owned and managed by the Lulworth Estate, at whose heart is Lulworth Castle. Each year, over 250,000 people walk across the hill linking the cove to Durdle Door.

Lulworth Cove from the west

Outside links

• The Lulworth Estate
• Dr Ian West's page on the geology of Lulworth Cove (retrieved from the Internet archive)
• Dr. Ian West's page on the geology of Stair Hole and the Lulworth Crumple

References

• West, Ian, The Geology of the Dorset Coast, Southampton University, 2003.