West Bay, also known as Bridport Harbour, is a small harbour settlement and seaside resort at the mouth of the River Brit approximately 1½ miles south of Bridport. Bridport historically needed a harbour to export its principal products, rope and nets. The harbour at West Bay is not a natural landscape feature and it has a long history of having been silted up, blocked by shingle and damaged by storms, and each time repairs, improvements and enlargements have subsequently been made. The harbour has been moved twice: it was originally 1 mile inland, then was moved to the coast beside the East Cliff, then was moved again 300 yards along the coast to the west, where it is now located. The main commercial trade of the harbour, exporting Bridport's ropes and nets, declined in the second half of the 19th century and when the railway arrived in 1884, attempts were made to provide the settlement with the facilities of a resort, and today West Bay has a mixed economy of tourism and fishing (Link Wikipedia).
SY4690 : West BayRef Adrian Platt's question about the steel posts shown on his image "West Bay": I understand that they were intended to support an angling jetty, but there was insufficient money to complete the project. Maurice D. Budden