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The above image is copyright Dorset County Council 2000 and is reproduced here with permission.

The aerial photograph shows the approximate area covered by this map.

This is dominated by Pennsylvania Castle - now a private house - sitting above another castle - the long-ruined Rufus (or Bow and Arrow) Castle. 

This in turn sits high above Church Ope Cove which was, for many years, a favourite sheltered beach for swimming and launching fishing boats.

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Hidden under many year's growth of brambles is John Penn's Bath, a stone bathing pool carved into the rock two centuries ago.

Piled up in Perryfields Quarry were the rotting and rusting remains of Weymouth's once-glorious Jubilee Hall; a structure which was supposed to be carefully preserved by the Council but which became a pile of rusty ironwork and rotting wood.

PENNSYLVANIA CASTLE

The picture shows Pennsylvania Castle in the late 1980s when it was a hotel run by Paul and Indu Fransham.  It was then owned by local businessman John Hannah.

It was built by John Penn, grandson of the founder of the State of Pennsylvania using land given by his friend King George III. 

By 1800 John Penn had spent £20,000 on his 'castle' and enclosed land containing St Andrew's Church and Rufus Castle - much to the dismay and animosity of the local Portlanders. 

In 1800 the King and Queen visited the castle and enjoyed their wedding anniversary in festive style.

An unusual design of sundial in the grounds of Pennsylvania Castle.

The gnomon which casts a shadow on the dial is formed by the two outside straight edges which align with the celestial pole.

In about 1989 I was invited to do some modelling work. Well, it was actually two publicity pictures taken for a brochure to be produced for the Pennsylvania Castle when it was a hotel. The hotel was sold and turned into a private home before the brochures were published. So, these two picture are the sum total of my photographic modelling experience!

In June 2010 this property was offered for sale open to offers in excess of £4 million - please click here for details. The building has 7 bedrooms, 8 bathrooms and 6 reception rooms.

These views were taken during the 2010 Summer Fete held in the gardens of the Castle.

ST ANDREWS CHURCH

By following a footpath alongside the northern edge of Pennsylvania Castle's garden you will pass through a wood; a rare feature on Portland's windswept landscape. This then opens up into St Andrew's church yard.

Once the main place of worship for Portlanders and built in the 13th century, it has been destroyed by landslips and invasions of French pirates. 

This picture dates from 1989 before the area was tidied up.

In the Autumn of 2003 there was great consternation because a bonfire had been lit in the graveyard as part of a party.

The scorch mark can be seen in this picture.

It could have been a lot worse - the fire was lit as far from the wall and gravestones as feasible - but it is still inappropriate to do this in a graveyard.

There are many fascinating gravestones in St Andrew's ruined church yard. Now that it has been 'tidied up' these are more visible.

This stone has the skull and crossbones emblem.

This has nothing to do with pirates as is mistakenly but frequently written in local guides. The skull and crossbones symbol was once common on tombstones representing Death.

The people buried here were respectable citizens of Portland.

In 1992 I worked with the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers to build this handrail and rebuild the overgrown and damaged steps that go from the old church down to Church Ope Cove.

John Penn was very unpopular with Portland's governing Court Leet. So, the Leet members watched and waited as the bath was built. 

When finished they announced that Penn had built his wonderful bath on Common Land and that he would have to pay to use it - an exorbitant 2 shillings and 6 pence per year!

Outraged, Penn abandoned his bath - probably much to the relief of his servants!

Here we see my best friend Sandra posing in the bath in the mid-1990s.

The bath is heavily overgrown and can only be visited by a very precarious struggle through brambles over a precipitous drop. A visit is for the strong-hearted and adventurous only.

However, should you ignore my warnings then please click here for instructions on how to find the bath, more pictures and a plan of the bath I made in 2003.

AN ANCIENT RESERVOIR

A path descends from the ruined St Andrew's Church towards the main stepped path up from Church Ope Cove.

To the left of this path is an area of thick brambles. Hidden behind this thicket is a small opening known only to a tiny number of locals. Rumour has it that this was a Roman reservoir. It is younger than that but of unknown age.

In 1989 I struggled through the brambles, pointed my camera into the totally dark chamber and took a flash photograph. This is what I saw when the picture was developed.

Clearly this is some sort of reservoir. Did it feed the small cafe that existed on Church Ope Beach in the first half of the 20th century? The two pictures below were taken in 2004 and kindly supplied by Liam Deeney. This is clearly a place into which nobody should enter.

The approach to Rufus Castle is particularly attractive with the archway framing a view of Penn's Weare and the wide sweep of Weymouth Bay beyond.

It is not known when it was built but the original structure of Rufus Castle is probably nearly 900 years old and it had additional fortifications added in 1238 by Richard de Clare who owned it at that time.

According to an article in the Free Portland News (May 2010) what we now see may be a folly built by John Penn sometime in the early 1800s - certainly the building was nothing like the 'Castle' seen in the late 1700s.

In the summer of 2003 the beach hut in the centre of this picture was put up for sale for no less than £18,000 with another being offered for £30,000 in the winter of 2003.

That latter price is more than ten times the cost of the first house I bought in Weymouth!

In Burton Bradstock a few miles along the coast, beach huts have been changing hands for six figure sums.

This rusting hand winch on the beach at Church Ope Cove is decaying evidence of the times when dozens of fishing boats sailed from here every day.

Now it is a bathing beach - albeit somewhat uncomfortable with those large pebbles!

THE JUBILEE HALL SAGA

Weymouth and Portland Borough Council pursued a grandiose scheme in the 1980s for a huge new shopping centre in the heart of Weymouth. Nothing wrong with that except that, having demolished many old and interesting buildings, the site lay unused - Weymouth's infamous 'bombsite' - for over a decade.

One of the buildings demolished was the Victorian Jubilee Hall - one of the finest surviving iron-framed buildings in the country - which had served as a cinema in St Thomas Street.

In response to a huge public outcry, the Council agreed to dismantle the Jubilee Hall and store it safely until it could be re-erected to house some worthy project, possibly a museum. 

The railway was opened to Easton in October 1900. It climbed steadily from Castletown along East Weares where the abandoned track can still be walked. Near the back of the Mermaid Inn the line turned inland and passed under the main road from Wakeham to Southwell at the point shown here.

In the 1980s and 1990s the track was used by heavy lorries associated with the nearby quarries and it never recovered. It is now a permanent and disgusting quagmire as shown by my friend Sandra as she struggles to get free of the mud above left. Even in dry summers it never quite dries out - see above right.

Near the point where the road through Wakeham bends to avoid Pennsylvania Castle lies a row of very old cottages.

In the early 1960s these could be bought for under £1,000. The right-hand pair of cottages form Portland Museum.

These were bought and presented to the people of Portland for use as a museum in 1930 by Dr Marie Stopes, a pioneer of birth control in Britain.

The end cottage was called Avice's Cottage and is mentioned in Thomas Hardy's novel "The Well-Beloved".

Another view of Portland Museum, like the picture above, recorded in 1989.

One of the two cottages dates from 1640.

Please click here for old pictures of Portland Museum and for pictures associated with Marie Stopes when she lived at Portland.

THE 'CENOTAPH' QUARRY

At this point opposite Portland Museum once stood a small disused quarry where some allotments had been created - a quiet place deliberately left unspoiled by building works.

This is where the stone was taken to produce the thousands of gravestones for the War Graves Commission as well as the stone for the War Memorial in London's Whitehall.

It was agreed to leave this small quarry untouched as a tribute to the dead of two World Wars.

Now we have an estate of houses - see picture - built in the late 1990s!

Soapbox Derby - Wakeham 1989. 

Sadly now discontinued.

This one lies in ruins near Rufus Castle above the old railway line.

So much of Portland's history has just been allowed to rot away.

This picture was taken in 1990.

These next four pictures show the crane in October 2005.

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