page_title: Isle of Portland
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Isle of Portland / History
caption_attribution_description: w:Portland Castle
context_page_description: The Isle of Portland is a tied island, 6 kilometres long by 2.7 kilometres wide, in the English Channel. Portland is 8 kilometres south of the resort of Weymouth, forming the southernmost point of the county of Dorset, England. A barrier beach called Chesil Beach joins it to the mainland. The A354 road passes down the Portland end of the beach and then over the Fleet Lagoon by bridge to the mainland. Portland and Weymouth together form the borough of Weymouth and Portland. The population of Portland is 12,797.
  Portland is a central part of the Jurassic Coast, a World Heritage Site on the Dorset and east Devon coast, important for its geology and landforms. Portland stone, a limestone famous for its use in British and world architecture, including St Paul's Cathedral and the United Nations Headquarters, continues to be quarried here.
  Portland Harbour, in between Portland and Weymouth, is one of the largest man-made harbours in the world. The harbour was made by the building of stone breakwaters between 1848 and 1905.
context_section_description: Portland has been inhabited since at least the Mesolithic period (the Middle Stone Age)—there is archaeological evidence of Mesolithic inhabitants at the Culverwell Mesolithic Site, near Portland Bill, and of habitation since then. The Romans occupied Portland, reputedly calling it Vindelis.
  Although the beginning of the Viking Age in England is dated to their raid in 793, when they destroyed the abbey on Lindisfarne, their first documented landing occurred in Portland four years earlier, in 789, as recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Three lost Viking ships from Hordaland (the district around Hardanger fjord in west Norway) landed at Portland Bill. The king's reeve tried to collect taxes from them, but they killed him and sailed on.
  Rufus Castle, standing over Church Ope Cove was built for William II of England (also known as William Rufus) soon after the conquest of England by his father William the Conqueror.  None of that castle remains; the existing castle dates from the 15th century.
  In 1539 King Henry VIII ordered the construction of Portland Castle for defence against attacks by the French; the castle cost £4,964. It is one of the best preserved castles from this period, and is opened to the public by the custodians English Heritage.
  In the 17th century, chief architect and Surveyor-General to James I, Inigo Jones, surveyed the area and introduced the local Portland stone to London, using it in his Banqueting House, Whitehall, and for repairs on St Paul's Cathedral. His successor, Sir Christopher Wren, the architect and Member of Parliament for nearby Weymouth, used six million tons of white Portland limestone to rebuild destroyed parts of the capital after the Great Fire of London of 1666. Well-known buildings in the capital, including St Paul's Cathedral and the eastern front of Buckingham Palace feature the stone. After the First World War, a quarry was opened by The Crown Estate to provide stone for the Cenotaph in Whitehall and half a million gravestones for war cemeteries, and after the Second World War hundreds of thousands of gravestones were hewn for soldiers who had fallen on the Western Front. Portland cement has nothing to do with Portland; it was so named due to its similar colour to Portland stone when mixed with lime and sand.
  There have been railways in Portland since the early 19th century. The Merchant's Railway was the earliest—it opened in 1826 (one year after the Stockton and Darlington railway) and ran from the quarries at the north of Tophill to a pier at Castletown, from where the Portland stone was shipped around the country.  The Weymouth and Portland Railway was laid in 1865, and ran from a station in Melcombe Regis, across the Fleet and along the low isthmus behind Chesil Beach to a station at Victoria Square in Chiswell. At the end of the 19th century the line was extended to the top of the island as the Easton and Church Ope Railway, running through Castletown and ascending the cliffs at East Weares, to loop back north to a station in Easton. The line closed to passengers in 1952, and the final goods train (and two passenger 'specials') ran in April 1965.
  The Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck stationed a lifeboat at Portland in 1826, which was withdrawn in 1851. Coastal flooding has affected Portland's residents and transport for centuries—the only way off the island by land is along the causeway in the lee of Chesil Beach. At times of extreme floods (about every 10 years) this road link is cut by floods. The low-lying village of Chiswell used to flood on average every 5 years. Chesil Beach occasionally faces severe storms and massive waves, which have a fetch across the Atlantic Ocean. Following two severe flood events in the 1970s, Weymouth and Portland Borough Council and Wessex Water decided to investigate the structure of the beach, and coastal management schemes that could be built to protect Chiswell and the beach road. In the 1980s it was agreed that a scheme to provide storm protection with a 20% annual exceedance probability to reduce
caption: Portland Castle was built to defend Portland in the 16th century.
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