Kimmeridge Bay, Dorset

Works instructed: September 2006
Available: During 2008

Visible for miles around, Clavell Tower provides almost the only manmade intervention in the wide sweep of Kimmeridge Bay in Dorset, part of the only stretch of our coastline so far awarded World Heritage Site designation. The Tower was built in 1830 by Reverend John Richards Clavell of Smedmore as an observatory and folly, with three storeys and a distinctive Tuscan colonnade. Thomas Hardy courted Eliza Bright Nicols here and used it as a frontispiece for his Wessex Poems. More recently, it inspired P. D. James’s novel, The Black Tower. For almost two hundred years Clavell Tower has provided a point of destination and punctuation for the many who have walked these cliffs and contemplated the panorama. 

Derelict since it was gutted by fire in the 1930s, in recent years the tower has been perilously close to falling into the sea due to coastal erosion.  The Clavell Tower Trust and the Smedmore Estate approached Landmark for help and an emergency appeal was launched in 2004.  Thanks to our generous donors and grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund, Country Houses Foundation, Dorset County Council and the Smedmore Estate, work is now underway on a unique conservation solution to save Clavell Tower from falling into the sea.

The tower has been painstakingly dismantled and is now being re-erected 25 metres back from the crumbling cliff face. In addition to moving the building, services such as electricity and water are also being installed. New stone is being carved to replace the missing sections of the parapet in a bankers' (or stonemasons') shed on site and a kitchen and bathroom being put in. The project is costing £898,000 which includes training for students from a local college in traditional stone masonry skills, an education programme run with four local primary schools and the production of information boards.

The aim of this ambitious conservation project is to retain Clavell Tower as an essential element in the coastal landscape of the World Heritage Site and safe from further coastal erosion. Once restored, it will be available to stay in and its rental income will pay for its future on-going maintenance thus giving it a secure future. The project will take approximately 18 months to complete.

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