Bridport stands where the Brit and the Asker meet and the western end of Chesil Bank and it can be traced back to the days of Athelstan and the 10th century and has been recorded in the Domesday Survey.

The name of the town may well have come from a market (port) on the River Brit as a market was regularly held here for well over a thousand years. Elizabeth  I granted the town a Saturday Market and also three annual fairs one of which is the towns annual carnival which is held each  August, and there is a market on two days of the week that line the main streets of the town.

The town  was once well known for the cultivation of flax and hemp and by the 13th century Bridport was well established as a major rope making centre and in    1213, King John ordered that it should produce as many ropes and cables as it could. There is a local legend that says that the Bridport Dagger which was the hangman's rope was made here.

The chemist shop used to be the George Inn and it ws here that Charles II gave Cromwell's soldiers the slip after the battle of Worcester in 1651.

The town is on the busy A35 which is normally at gridlock in the summer with the thousands of tourists flooding in, and this part of the road is graced by some fine Georgian architecture.  Luckily the main streets of the town are wide and there are quite a few Rope walks leading off which have developed due to the rope making and also the making of nets and these both had to be stretched out and even today the town is the centre of the rope and net making industry.

West Street Bridport (Photo kindly supplied by Iain Parsons, Cumbria)		The Parish Church (Photo kindly supplied by Mrs Valerie Pettifer, St Ives)
West Bay Harbour, Bridport 1998 (Photos kindly donated by William Grierson, Brucklay, Aberdeenshire)
View of East Cliff at West Bridport (Photo kindly donated by William Grierson, Brucklay, Aberdeenshire		The Harbour at West Bay photo courtesy of Jean Harding, Poole
WEST BAY The stunning golden colour of the majestic sandstone cliffs dominate what is called Dorset's Golden Gateway to the Jurassic Coast. as West Bay lies between Eype and Seatown to the west and Freshwater with Burton Bradstock in the east. It also lies at the western part of Chesil Bank and forms what is now called the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site that is within Lyme Bay. Besides being a favourite spot to hunt for dinosaur fossils it is also a lovely seaside are for holidays and coastal walks. It lies 1½ miles south of Bridport  in the Brit Valley, and, has featured in the television series about the people of a fictitious Dorset harbour, BBC's Harbour Lights which starred ex East Enders star Nick Berry.. Here was once a hive of activity as it was a busy fishing port as well as the centre of shipbuilding but today it is visited by thousands of tourists in the summer months but the winter it is a contrast as icy cold winds sweep in from the English channel and this and the force of the waves has caused major erosion along this stretch of the Dorset coast.