History
The area of Portland Bill was once used for quarrying until the early years of the 20th century. The Portland Bill Lighthouse was built with stone from these quarries and the area was then finally abandoned. Even today, evidence of quarrying tramways can be found. In the storms of January 1990, the weather ripped out an area of cliff top to reveal old rails from the Victorian tramway where it curved round to meet Portland Bill's crane.
Portland had no road reaching to Portland Bill until one was built between the World Wars and visitors originally had to travel over a rough track. A small number of housing is found in the area, largely around the Old Lower Lighthouse, and the housing remains one of the most remote settlements in South Dorset.
The Ministry of Defence Magnetic Range is found at Portland Bill, where tests can be performed away from stray electric and magnetic fields. Close to this range is Portland's "Raised Beach" - created during a warm inter-glacial climate change 200,000 years ago when sea levels were about 15 metres above present levels. A Coastguard station is also located close to Portland Bill.
During the total total eclipse of the sun in August 1999, the eclipse passed one kilometre off Portland Bill, where thousands of people travelled to the area for the experience.
Many beach huts are found in the Portland Bill area, and often sell for prices around £30,000. This is due to the modern planning regulations which were not in force when the huts were originally placed at Portland Bill.
Read more about this topic: Portland Bill
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
“The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice—although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.”
—G.M. (George Macaulay)