Beer & the Quarry Caves

Come down the last stretch of path and the village of Beer opens beneath you: a scatter of fishing boats hauled up on the shingle, a fold of green valley running to the sea, and above it all a wall of dazzling white chalk. Somewhere under your feet lies a second Beer entirely, a vast hollow world of caverns cut by hand. Two Beers, then, one of sea and boats, one of stone and darkness.

This is the western edge of England's chalk. The white cliffs of Beer Head are the most westerly chalk in the whole country, and beneath them lie older layers, a greensand and a creamy limestone that made this village quietly famous. Beer stone is a fine, pale limestone, soft and easy to carve when it is freshly cut from the ground, hardening as it weathers. Since Roman times men have burrowed underground to win it, and it travelled far: into Exeter Cathedral, into Westminster Abbey, into the tracery and vaulting of great churches across the land. Beer lived by two other trades as well. It fished, as it still does, and it smuggled, as it no longer admits to, though the local free-trader Jack Rattenbury became a legend along this coast. Fishing, smuggling, and stone: three trades from one small village between the cliffs.

Look first at the boats on the shingle. There is no harbour here, so the fishing craft are winched straight up onto the beach, and you may see the day's catch sold from the shore. Look second at Beer Head itself, that brilliant white rampart to the west. On its grassy top grows a chalk grassland that in summer holds rare butterflies and wildflowers, a bright airy world above the drop. Look third at the shore and the cliffs for seabirds working the water and nesting on the ledges. Look fourth, if you take the tour, at the quarry caves inland: not a natural cave but a mine, its roof held up by great square pillars of the stone the miners left behind, forming chamber after chamber like the aisles of a cathedral built underground. And look fifth for the marks of the tools themselves in that stone, Roman, medieval, and Victorian hands all working the same creamy rock.

Those caves are the heart of Beer's story. Picture the quarrymen by candlelight, cutting blocks in the dark and hauling them out to be shipped along the coast and carved into saints and angels for churches they would never see. For nearly two thousand years the work went on, from Roman soldiers to Victorian masons, each generation deepening the maze until it spread for acres beneath the hill. When the quarrying finally ceased, the caves did not fall silent. They became one of the most important bat roosts in the region, the old workings sheltering colonies through the winter dark, so that a place made entirely by human hands is now given back to wild and secret life.

A word of care before you wander. These chalk cliffs are steep and they shed rock without warning, so keep well back from the edges above and never linger beneath the crumbling faces below. Watch the tide if you walk the beach. Enjoy Beer from its safe and generous viewpoints, and let the cliffs keep their distance.

From Beer the Coast Path carries on the short way to Seaton, where the River Axe meets the sea, and beyond that lies Dorset and the fossil coast proper. Take a last look back at the boats on the shingle beneath that white wall of chalk, and think of the hidden cathedral of stone in the hill behind you, quarried by candlelight and given at last to the bats. Walk safe.