Fossil hunters who flocked to Lyme Regis in Dorset after the biggest landslip for 100 years were disappointed to discover the beach littered with rubbish from a dump. Instead of giant ammonites and the bones of prehistoric marine reptiles, for which the town has been famous since Victorian times, the debris contained tens of thousands of glass bottles, tyres, car batteries and radiators.

When the 400m (1,300ft) stretch of cliff collapsed on Tuesday night it tipped millions of tonnes of Dorset’s Jurassic Coast into the sea. The 70m cascade of clay and rocks made such a roar that some residents thought that there had been an earthquake. Boulders the size of small cars were still bouncing down the cliff face 12 hours later as the first fossil hunters ignored warnings from the police and coastguard to stay away.

Doris Davies, 76, from Lyme Regis, said: “I’ve been fossil hunting on this beach for 40 years so when I heard there was a landslide I thought I would have a look, but rather than find any fossils I’ve just found loads of old bottles and car parts from the old dump.”

Graham Turner, the station manager for Lyme Regis coastguard, said: “The dump has been closed for 25 years and was 300ft inland. The landslide has taken the cliff edge back to the start of it and the place is strewn with litter.

“There are thousands of bottles, broken glass, plastic, tyres and even immersion heaters lying among the mud. When it was in use, the dustmen did not have carts to compact the rubbish and it was thrown into the ground raw.

“We don’t think it will get washed away by the tide but at the moment we have no idea how we are going to get rid of it.”

West Dorset District Council, whose officials were inspecting the landslip yesterday, told people to stay away from the beach because it was “dangerously muddy”.

Lyme Regis, made famous by the author John Fowles in his novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman, sits on a layer of slippery, Blue Lias clay, which makes the entire area prone to landslips. The latest phase of a stabilisation programme has just been completed at a cost of £32 million. To stop the town sliding into the sea holes have been drilled and filled with concrete to pin the layers of clay together.

Sally Holman, the Mayor of the town, said that the landslip was a warning that funding had to be found for the next stage of the programme - estimated to cost £21 million. “It was very lucky this happened at high tide so that no one was on the beach,” she said. “What it shows is how urgently the next phase of the protection scheme needs to be carried out.”

The stretch of coastline that collapsed is part of the 95-mile (153km) Jurassic Coast, which was designated by Unesco as a world heritage site, along with Stonehenge. It has been known for its fossils dating back 195 million years since the 19th century.

A spokesman for the Coastguard Agency said: “It’s a very popular fossiling area, so our main concern is to keep members of the public away because it’s such a big landslip.”

Richard Edmonds, the earth science manager at the Jurassic World Heritage site, said: “The landslide has just missed the best layer for fossils, but it will still have uncovered a lot.

“They are covered in mud, which is still moving, so people wishing to hunt are being advised to stay away for at least two days.”

Dinosaur coast

— Cliffs between Exmouth and Swanage have one of the most complete sequences of the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods

— Lyme Regis marks the point where the Triassic rocks disappear below the sea and the oldest Jurassic rocks form the cliffs. These were deposited in a tropical sea rich in marine life that left a huge volume of fossils

— Mary Annings, the “Princess of Palaeontology”, lived in Lyme Regis from her birth in 1799. She found the first complete ichthyosaur, plesiosaur and the first flying reptile

Sources: www.lymeregis.com; Times archives

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