The Complete Guide to the Jurassic Coast and the Solent
Region: Dorset and Hampshire
Beaches covered: 8
Coastlines: Lyme Bay, the Channel and the Solent
A glassworks from 1616, and a coast that’s still falling into the sea
At Kimmeridge Bay there is a scheduled monument that almost nobody visits for the right reason. Excavations in 1980 and 1981 uncovered two glass furnaces, dated 1616 to 1618 and 1618 to 1623, sitting in the ground above the shore alongside large quantities of glass slag and crucible fragments. Both remain preserved in situ.
The story behind them is remarkable. Sir William Clavell owned Kimmeridge and had been trying to make alum from the local shale. In 1615, the use of wood to fire glass furnaces was outlawed to stop the destruction of England’s woodland. Two years later, Clavell went into partnership with Abraham Bigo, who held a concession to build a glasshouse on Purbeck, and they used Kimmeridge’s oil-bearing blackstone as fuel instead. For a few years it worked. Their green drinking glass became the main supply for the south of England.
Then Sir Robert Mansel, who held the national glassmaking monopoly, forced them out. Clavell’s royalties went unpaid; he ended up in prison and died in 1644, having lost a fortune.
So Dorset has a four-hundred-year-old failed glassworks with its waste still in the ground above the beach. It’s the oldest glass story on this site by two hundred years, and it’s the reason Kimmeridge sits at the top of this page.
The rest of the region runs on something different: erosion. This is the Jurassic Coast, England’s only natural World Heritage Site, 185 million years of rock exposed along ninety-five miles of shore — and the reason it’s exposed is that it’s actively collapsing. Charmouth, Lyme Regis and Barton-on-Sea all have cliffs that come down regularly. That’s what releases the fossils Mary Anning made famous, and it’s what keeps reworking the beaches below.
There’s one more thing you need to know before planning anything here, and it catches people out badly. The tides in eastern Dorset barely move. Portland and Poole run a spring range of around two metres, roughly half of what you’ll get at Lyme Regis and among the smallest anywhere in England — and the Solent has a double high water, holding the tide up for hours. Almost no foreshore is exposed. Those beaches are storm-driven almost entirely.
Dorset and Hampshire sea glass at a glance
Best overall: Charmouth
Shingle that traps material, a proper four-metre range, and Black Ven landsliding behind it, the largest coastal landslip in Europe- constantly reworking the beach below. Add fossils on the same tideline and dogs all year on East Beach, and it’s the most complete hunt in the region.
Best for beginners: Swanage
A Victorian resort with a pier, a steam railway and everything you need on the seafront. Easy terrain, sheltered bay, and Monkey Beach between Stone Quay and the pier is dog-friendly all year. Forgiving in every sense.
Best for colour variety: Fort Gilkicker
A Palmerston fort on the Gosport shore looking straight across at Portsmouth. Five hundred years of Royal Navy in one stretch of water, plus the dockyard, the Solent shipping and centuries of naval provisioning. The most varied source material in the region.
Best for sea pottery; Lyme Regis
The Cobb has sheltered this harbour since the thirteenth century, and the town has been shedding material into it ever since. Glazed shards worn to pebbles alongside the glass, and the fossil beds either side.
Best without a car: Barton-on-Sea
New Milton station on the South Western main line is about a mile and a half from the clifftop. Fast, actively eroding cliffs full of Barton Beds fossils, and a long shingle and sand beach below.
Best dog-friendly: West Bay
East and West Beach both close from May, but the third beach beyond the large rock groyne carries no restrictions at all, year-round. Almost nobody knows it’s there, which is the second reason to use it.
Best right now
With ranges this variable, conditions here differ more between beaches than in any other region. The Sea Glass Score updates daily.
Top 10 Dorset & Hampshire Sea Glass Beaches Right Now
- Chesil Cove Dorset — 88/100 (Excellent) Fresh swell A top beach on form — go best window 2026-10-27, 10:51–13:51
- Lyme Regis Dorset — 63/100 (Good) Building swell Good window, though this beach is hit-and-miss best window 2026-10-27, 10:59–13:59
- Charmouth Beach Dorset — 63/100 (Good) Building swell Good window at a premier beach best window 2026-10-27, 10:59–13:59
- West Bay Dorset — 63/100 (Good) Building swell Good window, though this beach is hit-and-miss best window 2026-10-27, 10:42–13:42
- Fort Gilkicker Hampshire — 60/100 (Good) Sea settling Good day at a reliable beach best window 2026-10-28, 13:21–14:21
- Kimmeridge Bay Dorset — 59/100 (Fair) Sea settling Fair — expectations lower at this beach best window 2026-10-28, 11:04–14:04
- Swanage Beach Dorset — 54/100 (Fair) Fair — expectations lower at this beach best window 2026-10-28, 15:06–18:06
- Barton-on-Sea Hampshire — 54/100 (Fair) Building swell Fair — expectations lower at this beach best window 2026-10-27, 15:14–18:14
How the coast divides
West Dorset: Lyme Regis, Charmouth, and West Bay are the fossil coast and the productive end. Spring ranges around four metres, actively eroding cliffs, shingle beaches, and material constantly being reworked. If you’re coming for glass, come here.
Chesil and Portland: more landform than beach. Eighteen miles of shingle, famously graded by pebble size along its length, with the Fleet lagoon behind it. Ranges drop to around two metres. Extraordinary, and heavily restricted in summer.
Purbeck: Kimmeridge and Swanage are where the geology gets strange, and the industry gets old. Shale ledges, Purbeck stone quarries, and Clavell’s glassworks. Small tidal ranges, sheltered bays.
The Solent: Barton-on-Sea and Fort Gilkicker are naval country. The double high water means the tide sits high for hours and barely drops, so these are storm beaches almost entirely. What they lack in tidal exposure they make up for in five centuries of Royal Navy traffic.
Every Dorset and Hampshire beach we’ve rated
West Dorset
Lyme Regis: Fair
The Cobb, the fossil beds, and Mary Anning’s town. A working harbour since the medieval period with the material to show for it. Front Beach closes to dogs 1 May to 30 September.
Charmouth: Good
The best fossil beach in England and a decent glass beach alongside it. East Beach takes dogs all year; West Beach closes in summer. Cliffs come down here regularly; stay off the bases.
West Bay: Fair
Golden sandstone cliffs, a working harbour, and the Broadchurch backdrop. Three beaches: East and West both close to dogs in summer, but the third beyond the large rock groyne has no restrictions at all. That’s the one to know about.
Chesil and Portland
Chesil Beach: Good
Eighteen miles of shingle graded so consistently by size that fishermen could once judge their position along it in fog just by the pebbles underfoot. A genuinely world-class landform. Read the access section below before planning a visit; the central stretch is closed to the public every summer.
Purbeck
Kimmeridge Bay: Fair
Shale ledges, rock pools, Clavell’s Tower on the cliff and a Jacobean glassworks in the ground. Privately owned with a toll road, and the Dorset Wildlife Trust’s Wild Seas Centre on the shore. The most interesting beach in the region by a distance.
Swanage: Fair
A Victorian seaside town in a sheltered bay, with Purbeck stone quarried behind it for centuries and shipped from the quay. Front Beach closes to dogs in summer; Monkey Beach is open all year.
Hampshire and the Solent
Barton-on-Sea: Fair
Some of the fastest-eroding cliffs in England, packed with Eocene fossils. The erosion is the point where new material appears constantly. Mainline station nearby.
Fort Gilkicker: Good
A Palmerston fort of 1871 on Gilkicker Point, built to defend Portsmouth against a French invasion that never came. The Solent shore below it has carried the Royal Navy since Henry VIII.
What Dorset and Hampshire sea glass actually looks like
Common: Green, brown and white. Bottle stock from harbour towns, resorts and naval provisioning.
Occasional: Aqua and pale blue, mostly around Lyme, West Bay and the Solent forts where older material concentrates.
Rare: Cobalt and purple. Uncommon everywhere in the region.
Green, and the Kimmeridge question. Clavell and Bigo made green drinking glass that was their product. Four centuries of erosion later, whether any of it has reached the modern foreshore is genuinely unknown, and I’m not going to claim it has. But the furnaces are there, the slag is there, and the cliffs are eroding. If you find thick, dark, unusually crude green glass at Kimmeridge, it’s worth a much closer look than you’d give it anywhere else.
Fossils, and they’re free. Charmouth, Lyme Regis and Barton-on-Sea are three of the best fossil beaches in Britain. Ammonites, belemnites, and at Barton, the shells and shark teeth of the Eocene. Same tideline, same walk. Collect from the beach, never from the cliffs.
Portland and Purbeck stone turns up worn smooth: the material that built St Paul’s and half of London, tumbled into pebbles.
Find something special? Use our sea glass scanner, GlassLore, to find out rarity, value and history; then you can share to our finds gallery and, more importantly, earn points to climb our hunters leaderboard – are you ready to compete?
When to go
Winter, after a south-westerly. This coast faces into Channel weather, and storms are what move material, particularly east of Portland, where the tide does almost nothing.
In the west, spring tides still matter. Lyme, Charmouth and West Bay get around four metres, so a spring low genuinely opens ground up.
East of Portland, stop planning around the moon. With a two-metre range and a Solent double high water that holds the tide up for hours, the difference between neaps and springs at Swanage, Kimmeridge or Gilkicker is marginal. Go after weather instead.
Cliff falls are a real hazard here, not a theoretical one. The whole reason this coast produces fossils is that it collapses. Charmouth, Lyme and Barton all have active landslip. Never work directly beneath a cliff, and stay well clear after heavy rain.
Check Chesil’s access dates before anything else.
Dogs and the Chesil closure
Three councils cover this region, and Dorset Council’s rules are beach-by-beach rather than blanket, which means neighbouring beaches genuinely differ.
Dorset Council excludes dogs from 1 May to 30 September at West Beach Charmouth, East and West Beach at West Bay, Front Beach at Lyme Regis, Front Beach at Swanage, Seatown, and Weymouth Central Beach. Dogs must be on leads on the roads and walkways approaching beaches at Charmouth, West Bay, Lyme Regis and Swanage.
The useful part is what stays open:
- Charmouth East Beach: dogs any time of year
- West Bay’s third beach, beyond the large rock groyne, no restrictions at all
- Swanage Monkey Beach, between Stone Quay and the pier, off-lead all year, and the main beach off-lead 1 October to 30 April
Chesil Beach is the important one, and it isn’t really a dog rule. Along the stretch from the Tank Teeth boundary at Abbotsbury to the Portland Boundary Stone, dogs are permitted on leads on the seaward flank from 1 September to 30 April, and there is no public access at all outside those dates. That’s a full closure to everyone from May through August, protecting one of Britain’s most important little tern colonies, and the Fleet lagoon shoreline behind is closed year-round. Chesil at Abbotsbury, east of the Tank Teeth boundary, allows dogs all year.
If you turn up at central Chesil in July expecting to hunt, you will be turned around. Plan accordingly.
Kimmeridge is privately owned by the Smedmore Estate and sits outside the council order, so check on arrival at the toll road.
Barton-on-Sea falls under New Forest District Council and Fort Gilkicker under Gosport Borough Council, both separate orders on separate cycles. Check signage.
Fixed penalties are £100, rising to £1,000 at court.
One date to watch: Dorset Council’s current dog PSPO expires on 31 December 2026, so everything above is due to be remade within months.
For dog-friendly cafés and pubs, Yappy Places covers Lyme Regis, Charmouth, Swanage and the Purbeck villages.
Worth the stop, but not for the glass
Durdle Door and Lulworth Cove: the two most photographed pieces of coastline in England, and rightly.
Corfe Castle: a slighted Civil War ruin above a village of Purbeck stone, on the steam railway from Swanage.
Clavell’s Tower: the folly above Kimmeridge, built in 1831 and moved back from the cliff edge in 2008 to save it from falling in. You can stay in it.
The Mary Anning statue, Lyme Regis: unveiled in 2022 after a campaign led by a local schoolgirl, which is a better story than most statues get.
Portland Bill: the lighthouse at the end of the island, with the race running offshore.
Planning a trip
A day: Charmouth and Lyme Regis. Fifteen minutes apart, both fossil and glass, and the best of the region in one tide.
A weekend: West Dorset on day one: Lyme, Charmouth, West Bay. Purbeck on day two: Kimmeridge and Swanage. Base in Bridport or Wareham.
Adding the Solent: Barton-on-Sea and Fort Gilkicker sit well over an hour east of Swanage and work better as their own day, paired with Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.
Getting here without a car: New Milton serves Barton-on-Sea; Portsmouth Harbour plus the Gosport ferry serves Gilkicker. Axminster is the railhead for Lyme Regis with a bus connection, and Weymouth is a mainline terminus. Swanage has the heritage steam railway from Wareham, which is a genuinely enjoyable way to arrive.
From beach to jewellery
Jurassic Coast glass comes up alongside fossils, which makes for a distinctive collecting habit: you come home with two kinds of history in the same bag. At Mermaid Tears, every piece of jewellery starts on a UK beach exactly like these, hand-hunted and handmade into something you’ll keep.
Disclaimer: Tide times, dog restrictions, parking charges and beach conditions change regularly. This region spans Dorset Council, New Forest District Council and Gosport Borough Council, each with separate orders on separate cycles — and Dorset’s current dog PSPO expires on 31 December 2026. Central Chesil Beach is closed to public access between 1 May and 31 August to protect nesting birds. The Jurassic Coast is actively eroding, and cliff falls are frequent, particularly after heavy rain. Never hunt beneath a cliff, and collect fossils from the beach rather than the cliff face. Kimmeridge Bay is privately owned, and access is at the owners’ discretion.
Last updated: August 2026
Frequently asked questions
Where is the best place to find sea glass in Dorset?
Kimmeridge Bay, for the history as much as the hunting. A Jacobean glassworks operated directly above the shore from 1616 to 1623, and its remains are still in the ground. The shale ledges and rock pools trap material well. Charmouth and Lyme Regis are the best alternatives and easier to reach.
Was there really a glassworks at Kimmeridge?
Yes. Sir William Clavell and Abraham Bigo built one in 1617, using Kimmeridge oil shale as fuel after wood-fired furnaces were outlawed in 1615. It made green drinking glass and supplied much of southern England before the national glassmaking monopoly shut it down. Excavations in 1980–81 found two furnaces along with glass slag and crucible fragments, and the remains are preserved on site as a scheduled monument.
Can you visit Chesil Beach all year?
No. The central stretch between the Tank Teeth boundary at Abbotsbury and the Portland Boundary Stone is closed to public access from 1 May to 31 August to protect nesting little terns, and the Fleet lagoon shoreline behind is closed year-round. From 1 September to 30 April you can walk the seaward flank, with dogs on leads.
Are Dorset beaches dog friendly?
It varies beach by beach rather than blanket. Six named beaches are open from 1 May to 30 September, but most have a dog-friendly section. Charmouth East Beach is open all year, so is West Bay’s third beach beyond the rock groyne, and Swanage’s Monkey Beach.
Why is the tidal range so small in east Dorset?
Local tidal dynamics collapse the range as you move east: Portland and Poole run around two metres on springs against roughly four at Lyme Regis, and the Solent gets a double high water that holds the tide up for hours. Very little foreshore is exposed, so beaches east of Portland are almost entirely storm-driven rather than tide-driven.
Can you find fossils and sea glass on the same beach in Dorset?
Yes, and it’s one of the real pleasures of hunting here. Charmouth and Lyme Regis produce ammonites and belemnites; Barton-on-Sea produces Eocene shells and shark teeth. Same tideline, same walk. Collect from the beach and never from the cliff face.
