Old Harry Rocks
Interesting facts
- Old Harry Rocks form the eastern end of the Jurassic Coast, a 95-mile World Heritage shoreline whose rocks record some 185 million years of Earth history.
- The Jurassic Coast, which ends here, was inscribed by UNESCO in December 2001 as England's first wholly natural World Heritage Site.
- The gap called St Lucas' Leap is said to be named after a greyhound that tried to jump it while chasing a hare and fell to its death.
- Harry Paye, the Poole privateer often linked to the name, raided French and Spanish coasts around 1400 and is said to have taken 120 French ships off Brittany in 1406.
- In 1405 a French and Spanish fleet attacked Poole in revenge for Harry Paye's raids, and his brother was killed in the fighting.
- The stacks are cut from the Portsdown Chalk, laid down in the Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous and banded with layers of flint.
- Peregrine falcons, cormorants and great black-backed gulls use the cliffs, while bottlenose dolphins and seals are sometimes seen in the water around the stacks.
- Old Harry stands about 2.5 miles north-east of Swanage at Handfast Point, the tip of the chalk ridge of Ballard Down.
Why it is worth it
At Handfast Point, where the chalk downs of Purbeck end abruptly in the sea, a line of white stacks stands off the cliff: Old Harry Rocks. They mark the eastern end of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site, and on clear days you can see across the water to the Needles on the Isle of Wight, which are part of the same chalk band. Only a few thousand years ago the two were joined by a ridge of chalk; the sea broke through, leaving Purbeck and the Isle of Wight as two ends of a vanished bridge.
The chalk was laid down 84–72 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous and is striped with bands of flint. The formations are a lesson in coastal erosion made visible. The sea works into joints and cracks, opening caves; caves become arches; arches collapse and leave free-standing stacks, which in turn are worn down to stumps. Old Harry is the tallest stack; his "wife" is now a low stump — the original wife fell in 1509 — and further back are the headland known as No Man's Land, the gap of St Lucas' Leap and the Pinnacles. The National Trust, which owns the rocks, has chosen to let the sea do its work rather than fight it, so the scene will keep changing.
The name has a number of origins, none of them certain. Old Harry was a euphemism for the Devil, who was said to have slept on the rocks; another story names them after Harry Paye, a Poole pirate who is supposed to have lurked behind them; a third tells of a Viking raider drowned in a storm and turned to chalk. The ashes of H. G. Wells were scattered in the sea here. The best view is from the clifftop of the South West Coast Path, looking down on the stacks and the pale water around them, or from a boat below.
Getting there
Old Harry Rocks are on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, about 9 km from Bournemouth across the mouth of Poole Harbour. Bournemouth Airport (BOH) is about 17 km away. The usual start is the National Trust's South Beach car park in the village of Studland, from which a footpath leads about a mile to the clifftop above the rocks; longer circular walks continue over Ballard Down.
Plan your visit
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Nearby places
- Corfe Castle 9.6 km · castle-ruin
- The Needles 23.7 km · stack
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Old Harry Rocks are three chalk formations, including a stack and a stump, located at Handfast Point, on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, southern England. They mark the most eastern point of the Jurassic Coast, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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