Visible for miles around, Clavell Tower provides one of the few manmade interventions 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 for the many who have walked these cliffs and contemplated the panorama. 

Until Clavell Tower's recent renovation, it had been unused since the 1930s and had fallen into disrepair. In recent years the tower had 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. 

The tower was dismantled and re-erected 25 metres back from the crumbling cliff face. In addition to moving the building, services such as electricity and water were installed. New stone was carved to replace the missing sections of the parapet in a bankers' (or stonemasons') shed on site and a kitchen and bathroom put in. The project cost was £898,000 and allowed 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 has been to retain Clavell Tower as an essential element in the coastal landscape of the World Heritage Site and safe from further coastal erosion. Thanks to our generous individual donors and grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund, Country Houses Foundation, Dorset County Council and the Smedmore Estate, the restoration is complete and the tower is available for up to two people to stay in.  Its rental income will pay for its future on-going maintenance thus giving it a secure future.

For further details please contact the Booking Office or visit our Clavell Tower page.

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