Charmouth is a a tranquil village and is in the valley of the River Char in the southwest corner of Dorset and at the centre of the Lyme Bay coastline, where coastal hills rise steeply either side of the valley with Golden Cap to the east at 617 ft is the highest point on the south coast while to the west Black Ven can be found, one the largest landslips in Europe.

A winters day on the beach at Charmouth photo kindly submitted by Jean Harding, Poole, Dorset

The church is dedicated to St Andrew and was rebuilt on the site of an earlier church in 1836 there is also a congregational church that dates from 1689 an this was rebuilt i 1815, next door is The Queen Ann Arms which is the oldest building in the village and has many historical connections. It is thought that this could have been the house of an abbot and Catherine of Aragon stayed here in 1501 after fleeing from the Earl of Worcester. Charles II also stayed here after he had arranged passage across to France with a local ships captain called Stephen Limbry.

The story goes that while waiting for the Royal party to board, Limbry's wife found out and fearing for her life she locked the king in his room and prevented her husband being involved, but the ship headed for Bridport just in time as a passer-by had seen that one of the horses had been shod in what was called Worcester style and told the kings pursuers.

Anothe visitor here was Jane Austen and she has described Charmouth as a place of 'high grounds and extensive seeps of country, and still more, its sweet retired bay, beached by dark cliffs where fragments of low rock among the sands make it the happiest spot for watching the flow of the tide; for sitting in unwearied contemplation.'

The lovely beach lies about ½ south of the village and is famed for its fossils. At Black Ven a famous marine fossil was found, Ichthyosaurus was found embedded in the face of the cliff by Mary Anning and this has resulted in the area becoming what is known as the Jurassic Coast and being made a World Heritage site

Mary Anning		A Dorset Ammonite		The 21ft Ichthyosaurus
Mary Anning was a carpenters daughter, and she found a skeleton of an ichthyosaurus which lived between 5 and 120 million years ago in a cliff near Lyme Regis in 1811.  The cliffs near Lyme Regis and Charmouth are a paradise for fossil collectors. The high and constantly crumbling cliffs are formed of shale and beds of limestone. In them are ammonites, sea animals with shells which lived 330 million years ago. They can be broken out of some limestone beds, but may disintegrate if they are not given a coat of varnish or embedded in resin.