Freshwater Bay fossils and fossil collecting

Follow signs to the Isle of Portland from Weymouth and once you are on the island, you will drive through Fortuneswell, follow the road from here to Easton, take the Eastern Road towards the museum and continue down the eastern side of the Island.
There is car park at the top of Freshwater Bay, here there are excellent views including across to the mainland.
Parking is FREE on the Island of Portland (with the exception on the privately owned car park at Portland Bill). From the car park, walk South, into the old quarry, there is nearby access to the beach.

GRID REF: 50.53253°N, 2.43324°W

ammonites, mollusc's, algae, trace

Freshwater Bay is the best place on the Isle of Portland to access the Portland Stone. Here mollusc's and ammonites can be found, although the later is not common, along with trace fossils. You can collect from the cliff-top quarry or from the foreshore.

Low

Fossils at Freshwater Bay are not common and those that can be found are poorly preserved. The ammonites have mostly been taken, but it is still a lovely location to see the ripple marks and bivalves which are best photographed

Not for Children

Freshwater Bay is not suitable for children to fossil hunt, the edge of the quarry is very steep.

Good Access

Accessibility at Freshwater Bay is fairly good at this location, although the path can often be overgrown and during wet conditions, very slippery.

Disused Quarry, Cliffs

Fossils are mostly found in the loose rocks at the cliff-top quarry. but the foreshore at Freshwater Bay can also be accessed and fossils such as ammonites can be found here.

No Restrictions

There are no restrictions on the Isle of Portland, but sensible collecting is important for all locations. Please follow our Code of Conduct found under our safety notes section below.

Common sense when collecting at all locations should be taken and knowledge of tide times should always be noted. Please keep away from the edge of the quarry as this is very sleep.

Freshwater Bay
Tide Times

UK Tidal data is owned by Crown Copyright, and therefore sadly we are not allowed to display tide times without paying expensive annual contracts. However we sell them via our store, including FREE POSTAGE
Click here to buy a tide table

Accommodation

Seaview

Family run bed & breakfast, comfortable non-smoking accommodation with tea & coffee making facilities and networked & wireless broadband in all rooms. Open all year. Private parking.

151 Weston Street, Portland, DT52DG
Tel: 01305 821573

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£10/Year or 'FREE' for return links from accommodation website pages.

Last updated:
last visited:

Written by:

09/03/08
2008

Alister and Alison Cruickshanks


From the Purbeck Beds (Lulworth Formation), at the top of the quarry, you can find trace fossils of algal laminations and convolutions along with fossil tree trunks. Bivalves and oysters are also common from this formation. The lower beds are the Portland Beds, and there is a layer full of the large ammonites (Glaucolithites) that can often be seen over the island from quarries. However, these are over-collected and today, are quite rare. The serpulid worm, Glomerula gordialis is common. A shell bed further around the bay also yields oysters and bivalves. Bivalves are the most common fossil at Freshwater Bay Look out for trace fossils at Freshwater Bay, such as these algae traces

	Jurassic, 145mya
At the top of the cliffs at Freshwater Bay, is the Purbeck Beds these are of the Lulworth Formation. Of particular interest is the 'Top Cap' bed, which has fossil algae and tree trunks. Below this is the Jurassic, Portland Beds, Cherty Series. The full succession of this including the Basa Shell Bed is 200m to the north-west.....[more]


Geological Tools	Most of the fossils at Freshwater Bay are found by in the hard Portland Stone. You will need a good quality hammer and chisel to get any fossils out. A Crack hammer is recommended at this location....[more]

Other Locations similar to Freshwater Bay

For other locations with Portland Stone, try Dancing Ledge, Perryfield Quarry, Church Ope Church or West Weare in Dorset

Stone Tumblers (Lapidary)

Microscopes

Stone Tumblers are used for tumbling and polishing rough rock, stones and pebbles including those found on the beach and glass.

Whilst collecting fossils, on those days where you come back empty handed, you could collect rocks, stones and glass from the beach and tumble then at home.

These are all high quality machines to give a professional finish to your samples. The tumblers can be used with a variety of grits, most commonly Silicon Carbide Grit and Cerium Oxide. We have a wide range of rough rocks for sale too.

Microfossils are much easier to collect because they are so small that the vast majority of collections only concentrate on large finds. These small finds can simply be found by taking small samples of sands, crags, clays and soft rocks and examining them under a microscope.

We have a wide range of microscopes for sale, both for the study of fossils, but also educational and professional for use in the laboratory. We have Stereo microscopes, Compound Microscopes, Polarising Microscopes and Monocular Microscopes.

We have thousands of Test Sieves for Particle Analysis.

Endecotts Sieves: For accurate dependable results you can't buy a better test sieve than Endecotts. At every stage of manufacture each test sieve is individually inspected.

High Precision Tecan manufactures precision apertures as small as 3 microns for a wide array of applications such as filtering, sieving and nozzles. Its high-performance, ASTM/ISO compliant test sieves satisfy the most demanding fine particle grading requirements.

Our International Rock and Fossil Magazine