Potted History 1

There are few places in the British Isles with such a unique story as Portland. Throughout its long history this small Island (or rather peninsula) off the Dorset coast has played a surprising role in the development of the nation.
Traces of ancient occupation have been found in many parts of the Island, from Stone Age middens at Portland Bill, to Iron Age tools and barrows. The Romans were here in force, it was they who first used Portland Stone in quantity, and not only for their any huge stone coffins which have been found here. Their occupation saw the erection of massive earthwork defences on Portland�s summit, the Verne Hill. From here they could command a 360� panorama of the mainland coast and the English Channel. The hilltop over the sheltered anchorage was thus a natural choice for an encampment, formed with great earth ramparts and ditches.
Rampaging Danes shattered the Saxon peace that followed the Roman departure. Portland suffered one of the first Viking raids on England in the 8th Century, when they ransacked the island, murdered the reeve, and according to legend carried off prize young maidens. A phenomenon of this unique place is that stories of such far-off events have been carried down the generations in folk-memory.
Portlanders were traditionally fishers and farmers, and although Earl Godwin led a ferocious attack on the Island in 1052, the pattern of life here was settled and well organized by the time that the Doomsday Book was compiled.

Portland was the first Dorset entry in the 1086 Survey. It was the mediaeval farmers who devised the Great Field System, and here they laid out there strip fields separated by earth lynchets and dry stone walls. They set the Island�s landscape scene for 900 years. Long since lost on the mainland, some of those ancient strip fields are still worked on Portland to this day. Portland has been a Royal Manor for more than 1000 years, and throughout that time its Court Leet has guarded the rights and privileges of the Islanders. This ancient body still sits.

Church Ope Cove is one of the few safe landing places around the Island�s rocky shores, and a fort known as Rufus Castle was constructed on a high pinnacle of rock directly over the Cove as a defence against many French raids in which this part of the English Channel coast bore the brunt in the 13th to 15th Centuries. Above this cove is Portland�s first church of the C13th, sitting precariously on a cliff edge, now a romantic ruin of sylvan attraction. Portland Stone had been used in Exeter Cathedral in the 14th century, but its global fame was due primarily to Inigo Jones� Whitehall Banqueting House (1620�s) and Sir Christopher Wren�s magnificent St Paul�s Cathedral 40 years later. The completion of that colossal project owes much to the unsung skills of the Portland quarrymen and stone selectors, the pride for whom is still felt on the Island today.