Worbarrow Bay is a large broad and shallow bay just to the east of

Lulworth Cove Lulworth Cove is a cove near the village of West Lulworth, on the Jurassic Coast in Dorset, southern England. The cove is one of the world's finest examples of such a landform, and is a World Heritage Site and tourist location with approximately ...

on the

Isle of Purbeck The Isle of Purbeck is a peninsula in Dorset, England. It is bordered by water on three sides: the English Channel to the south and east, where steep cliffs fall to the sea; and by the marshy lands of the River Frome and Poole Harbour to the no ...

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 England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

Location

Worbarrow Bay is located about six kilometres south of Wareham and about 16 kilometres west of Swanage. At the eastern end of the Bay is a promontory known as

Worbarrow Tout Worbarrow Tout is a promontory at the eastern end of Worbarrow Bay on Isle of Purbeck in Dorset on the south coast of England, about south of Wareham and about west of Swanage. Immediately to its east is Pondfield Cove. Worbarrow Tout ("tou ...

. The northwest end of the bay is known as Cow Corner. Towering over Worbarrow Bay to the north is Flower's Barrow ridge, which due to

coastal erosion Coastal erosion is the loss or displacement of land, or the long-term removal of sediment and rocks along the coastline due to the action of waves, currents, tides, wind-driven water, waterborne ice, or other impacts of storms. The landwa ...

is gradually falling into the sea. Flower’s Barrow forms the western end of the ridge which runs all the way to

Ballard Point Ballard Down is an area of chalk downland on the Purbeck Hills in the English county of Dorset. The hills meet the English Channel here, and Ballard Down forms a headland, Ballard Point, between Studland Bay to the north and Swanage Bay to the ...

, north of Swanage. Worbarrow Bay is only accessible when the

Lulworth Ranges The Lulworth Ranges are military firing ranges located between Wareham and Lulworth in Dorset, England. They cover an area of more than , are leased in a rolling contract from the Weld Estate by the Ministry of Defence and are part of the Armoure ...

are open to the public. It can be reached by a walk down an easy track alongside Tyneham Gwyle, from the car park alongside the ghost village of

Tyneham Tyneham is a ghost village abandoned in 1943 and former civil parish, now in the civil parish of Steeple with Tyneham, in south Dorset, England, near Lulworth on the Isle of Purbeck. In 2001 the civil parish had a population of 0. The civil ...

. The residents of Worbarrow were required to leave their homes in 1943, including the Miller family who had lived at Worbarrow for many generations. Little evidence now remains of the eight cottages and coastguard station (disbanded in 1910) that once stood close to the bay.

Geology

2010-11-16-Arish mell flowers barrow geol 1

The geology of Worbarrow Bay and Mupe Bay are very similar and they almost mirror each other. The plane of the "mirror" bisects the point where the two bays meet, the Arish Mell gap. The cliffs behind Worbarrow Bay expose a sequence of

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...

rocks. These range from the

chalk Chalk is a soft, white, porous, sedimentary carbonate rock. It is a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite and originally formed deep under the sea by the compression of microscopic plankton that had settled to the sea floor. Ch ...

s at the northwest end of the bay, at Cow Corner, that are between 85 and 145 million years old, through to the hard stone outcrop in the east. The sediments that form the peninsula are

Portland limestone Portland stone is a limestone from the Tithonian stage of the Jurassic period quarried on the Isle of Portland, Dorset. The quarries are cut in beds of white-grey limestone separated by chert beds. It has been used extensively as a building sto ...

s, which is 150 million years old, and the

Purbeck Beds The Purbeck Group is an Upper Jurassic to Lower Cretaceous lithostratigraphic group (a sequence of rock strata) in south-east England. The name is derived from the district known as the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset where the strata are exposed in ...

, 147 million years old. The cliffs and the tout have distinctive angular layers of rock that visibly demonstrate the complex sedimentary folding that affected this area some 30 million years ago. The foldings were caused by tectonic pressures as the African and European continents collided. At that time the cliff sediments were twisted horizontally and that is why the younger chalks are found towards the rear of the bay and the older sediments face the sea at the front of the bay.

Fossil Zone

The localities along the Jurassic Coast include a large range of important

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

zones. The Purbeck lagoonal limestones and the shales that are exposed in the cliffs of Worbarrow Tout contain dinosaur footprints and have abundant brackish water bivalves,

gastropods The gastropods (), commonly known as snails and slugs, belong to a large taxonomic class of invertebrates within the phylum Mollusca called Gastropoda (). This class comprises snails and slugs from saltwater, from freshwater, and from land. The ...

and

ostracod Ostracods, or ostracodes, are a class of the Crustacea (class Ostracoda), sometimes known as seed shrimp. Some 70,000 species (only 13,000 of which are extant) have been identified, grouped into several orders. They are small crustaceans, typi ...

References

External links

Worbarrow Bay

Gallery

Image:Worbarrow bay from gold down dorset01.jpg, Worbarrow Bay from Gold Down Image:Worbarrow bay and Flowers barrow.jpg, Worbarrow Bay from the end of Tyneham Gwyle Image:Worbarrow bay from gold down dorset02.jpg, Worbarrow Bay from Gold Down {{Jurassic Coast Isle of Purbeck Bays of Dorset Jurassic Coast