Places on the Triassic Coast.
Picture Galleries.
Places on the Jurassic Coast.
Picture Galleries.
Places on the Cretaceous Coast.
Picture Galleries.
Osmington Mills near Weymouth – Dorset.
Osmington Mills is best known for its pub, the Smugglers' Inn which is set in a small valley at the top of the cliffs. Parts of the Inn are said to date from the 13th century but in 1805 Emmanuel Charles, the landlord of the Smugglers' Inn which was then known as the Crown was the leader of the most notorious gang of smugglers in the area.
On the beach a spherical nodule of calcite-cemented sandstone has been washed out of the cliff. Portland can be seen in the distance.
Layers of rock laid down in the Corallian period dating from late Jurassic of 157.1 to 154.7 million years ago.
The wreck of the Minx, this was a coal barge which lost her moorings on Portland in 1927 and is wrecked on the part of Pool Ledge
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Looking towards Bran Point, midway between Osmington Mills and Ringstead.
Sperical calcitic concretions or "doggers" are common in the Bencliff Grit. There are 3 in this photo, top left in the cliff, at its base and on the beach.
The cliff with its layers of Nothe Clay, Bencliff Grot and Osmington Oolite limestone.
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The cliffs east of Osmington Mills are made of a rock sequence known as the Corallian dating from late Jurassic period of 157.1 to 154.7 million years ago.
Dorset was covered by a subtropical Jurassic sea and shallow lagoons, an ever changing environment which formed the layers of limestone's, sandstones and mudstones which can be seen in the Osmington cliffs.
The creatures inhabiting the sea bed in these tropical waters were soft bodied worm like animals that burrowed in the sediment, leaving their fossilised tracks and trails but none of the actual remains of the soft bodied creatures.