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It is a very popular recreational location not only during the season, but during fine winter days as
well, offering the natural beauty of the landscape, the wonders of the marine wildlife which is easily observed in the shallow waters and water sports.
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The land surrounding the bay is part of the Smedmore Estate and vehicular access from the village is by a toll road - there is ample parking on the clifftop just above the bay.
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Various unsuccessful attempts have been made to put the oil shales which encompass the bay to commercial use since the
Romans fashioned jet-like jewellery from it. Little round discs of the shale, known locally as 'coal money',
have been found in the area in large quantities - they are the cores from the lathes of the Roman turners. Examples are displayed at Corfe Castle and
Dorchester museums and the museum at the Square and Compass public house at Worth Matravers displays a part of a table leg fashioned from the stone.
Attempts have been made to make glass here, fired by the oil, and to extract it commercially from the shales but these were unsuccessful until the 20th century when
drilling showed their to be commercially viable quantities of oil in the rocks below the bay and this is extracted by the
'donkey' on the western side of the bay. The oil is removed by road tanker.
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HISTORY OF OIL EXTRACTION AT KIMMERIDGE
The earliest attempt to commercially utilise the oil-breaing shales at Kimmeridge was in 1848 when the
Bituminous Shale Company was fromed expressly for that purpose. The shale had to be transported to the
Company's factory in Weymouth. Legal wrangles regarding the infringement of patent rights in the process
the company used and the offensive smells resulting from it led to heavy costs and the company being
wound up in 1854.
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The mine shaft was half a mile or so from the wooden pier which had been built into
Kimmeridge Bay to load
the shale onto ships, a light railway connecting them.
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Ferguson and Muschamp, was formed in 1855 to take over the workings producing fertilizer at its
works at
Sandford, near
Wareham.
This company failed after only three years, in 1858, the workings and
Sandford works being taken over by
Wanostrocht and Company supplying shale-oil gas for street lighting
in Paris as well as producing some fifty tons of shale-oil and 200 tons of fertilizer a month.
Finincial problems led to the company being bought by the Wareham Oil and Candle Company which,
working on a smaller, scale survived until 1872 when the
Sandford works
were destroyed by fire and the Company was forced to wind up.
Undeterred by previous failures, the Cornish West of England Fireclay Bitumen and Chymical Company
proposed to use about 10,000 tons of the shale a year to manufacture into oil and bitumen at its
Calstock works. The Company gave up its
Kimmeridge project after only two
years and failed entirely in 1876.
One last attempt to turn
Kimmeridge shale to profit was made
by the Sanitory Carbon Company of Wareham
in 1876, but it fared no better than its predecessors. This was the last serious attempt to obtain oil
in Dorset for fifty years.
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The oil shale was once used at Kimmeridge to fire glassworks.
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SALT PANS
Evidence of salt pans has been found at Kimmeridge, Charmouth, Lyme Regis and
Poole Harbour.
Salt extraction from seawater was once a profitable business and salt was exported to france in
the 15th century.
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Purbeck Marine Wildlife Reserve
Kimmeridge Bay, Kimmeridge, Wareham, Dorset, BH20 5PE tel: 01929 481044
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Recommend a Book for this Page
Prehistoric Dorset - The Story of its Fossils
Robert Coram © 1988 British Fossils
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