Jurassic Coast
— a hundred and eighty-five million years stacked like pages.
Not only on a wall.
“Ninety-six miles of cliff between Exmouth and Studland Bay, holding 185 million years of the earth's history in plain sight. Durdle Door is the photograph; the rest is red Triassic sandstone, dark Jurassic shale, and white chalk, dropping fossils onto the beach after every storm. Mary Anning worked these cliffs above Lyme Regis in the early nineteenth century. It is England's first natural UNESCO World Heritage site.
Jurassic Coast, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Jurassic Coast runs 96 miles, or 154 kilometres, from Orcombe Point near Exmouth in East Devon to Old Harry Rocks at Studland Bay in Dorset. It was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2001, England's first and still only natural World Heritage site. The cliffs expose a near-continuous geological record across the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods, covering roughly 185 million years between about 250 and 66 million years ago. The South West Coast Path follows the cliff line for the entire length, linking the small towns of Lyme Regis, West Bay, Weymouth, and Swanage.
The cliffs hold 185 million years of stratigraphy, stacked from the red Triassic sandstones at the western end through the dark Jurassic shales of the central coast to the chalk of the Isle of Purbeck in the east. Mary Anning of Lyme Regis helped uncover the first complete ichthyosaur skeleton from these cliffs in 1811 at the age of twelve, and later discovered the first plesiosaur in 1823. Her finds reshaped nineteenth-century palaeontology and put Lyme Regis on the geological map. A statue of Anning now stands above the harbour.
The South West Coast Path runs the full length and is the standard way to walk the coast. Durdle Door and Lulworth Cove, the most photographed stretches, sit in the central section with paid parking at Lulworth. Lyme Regis is the fossil-hunting town: the Mary Anning statue stands above the harbour, and guided walks leave from Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre most days. Tides matter; sections of beach disappear at high water. April through October is the standard walking season, while winter storms regularly reveal new fossils on the foreshore.