Dancing ledge is a disused quarry workings. There is a small swimming pool cut out of the ledge which proves popular with bathers during the summer.
Dancing ledge is a popular climbing area. Like many of the best places along the Jurassic Coast you have to walk a couple miles to get here, but the scenery is always rewarding, even if the climb back up the hill isn't so appealing!
Headbury Quarry houses an old canon, a reminder that the Purbeck cliffs offer no safe haven to shipping.
The East Indiaman, The Halswell, was wrecked along the cliffs near Seacombe in January 1786. Her journey had been fraught with difficulties, she'd been caught in a terrible storm, lost her rigging and had sprung a leak. On board were several women, many nieces and daughters of the ships Captain. Finally the inevitable happened, the ship hit the rocks and broke up. Having no means of getting the women to safety, Captain Pierce refused to leave his vessel and went down with his ship.
Many of the sailors and soldiers aboard found shelter in a small cave partway up the cliff, and eventually a couple of men managed to summon help from local quarrymen. Of the 242 people on board, over 188 managed to escape the vessel onto the rocks and into the cave. But of these, only 76 survived, the rest perishing before rescue.
The cave roof has since collapsed, but what remains is the stone to which so many survivors clung, earning its name, Halswell Rock, a natural tombstone to so many lost souls.
The extensive quarry galleries at Seacombe and Winspit are some of the best to be found on Purbeck.
Winspit is home so some exceptional medieval field systems, Strip Lynchettes.
The small square church on its summit is called locally, the Devils Chapel, and there is a local custom for women to drop a pin into its centre pillar if they wish to find a husband. The church has only one window, looking out to sea.
Worth Matravers and the Telecommunications Research Establishment played its part in the development of Radar during WW2. Experiments off St. Albans played a key part in the development of radio waves to detect both metal and wooden aircraft.
The disused coastguard station has been taken over by the National Coast Watch, a team of volunteers who watch over the treacherous race, which is thrown up by a deep-water ledge that runs 5 miles out to sea.
Shipwreck- The S.S. Treveal DisasterPete Gough, a coastwatch volunteer and local dive boat skipper, "Beaowulf" tells us about the S.S. Treveal which ran aground on the Kimmeridge Ledges in 1920. As Treveal waited for a tug from Portland, the weather worsened and by morning the crew decided they had no option but to abandon ship. As they came into Chapmans Pool they turned beam on to the waves and were capsized. The combination of cold winter water, rocks and raging surf killed many of them. Only a handful survived, many pulled to safety by the local vicar and a fisherman.
By morning the vessel had broke in two, and had the men remained on board, then surely they would all have survived. Of the 43 men which got into the Treveals lifeboats 36 men drowned and 15 bodies were never found.
Overlooking The St. Albans Race is a pillar of rock left behind by quarrymen as a seamark. Skippers of small boats prefer to cut close in to the headland to avoid going through or around the area of rough sea.
Chapman's Pool was dubbed "Dead Man's Pool" by the newspapers after the Treveal disaster.
Chapmans Pool marks the end of the Purbeck stone and the start of the grey, fossil rich Kimmeridge Clay.
The soft cliffs are prone to mud slides and cliff falls. The sea can be seen eroding the bay, gradually working its way inland.
As always, the video ends with a spectacular sunset sequence, a fitting finish to this beautiful coastline of the Jurassic Coast.
