West Bay Harbour

West Bay, also known as Bridport Harbour, is a small harbour settlement and resort on the English Channel coast in Dorset, England, sited at the mouth of the River Brit approximately 1.5 miles south of Bridport. The area is part of the Jurassic Coast, a World Heritage Site. The harbour at West Bay is not a natural landscape feature and it has a long history of having been silted up, blocked by shingle and damaged by storms, and each time repairs, improvements and enlargements have subsequently been made. The harbour has been moved twice: it was originally 1 mile inland, then was moved to the coast beside the East Cliff, then was moved again 270 metres along the coast to the west, where it is located today. The previous main commercial trade of the harbour—exporting Bridport's ropes and nets—declined in the second half of the 19th century. When the railway arrived in 1884, attempts were made to provide the settlement with the facilities of a resort, and today West Bay has a mixed economy of tourism and fishing.
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