Around 140 people crowded into the United Church Hall Bridport on a mild July evening to hear Professor Denys Brunsden, OBE, 'father' of the Jurassic Coast, give an absorbing, spirited and often passionate lecture on 'Learning From The Jurassic Coast' under the broader banner 'Looking After The World'.

In delivering this new lecture to Golden Cap Centre members, Professor Brunsden, who made the initial suggestion to approach UNESCO about World Heritage status for the Dorset and East Devon coast, firstly asked his audience to stand back and consider what a World Heritage site is and why it is so important.

All signatories to UNESCO have committed to looking after their special sites for ever because they have a value - cultural or natural - to all mankind and not just the nations themselves or the localities in which they happen to be.

Professor Brunsden's message was that the mission to educate and exchange information to preserve and learn from these special places is a global one but that this has its roots at a local level. So why does our coastline merit such special status and why is it so important to humanity? Because, said Professor Brunsden's, 'It represents a walk through time. It is also a walk through the evolution of species.' To walk from East Devon along our coast to the Old Harry Rocks is to literally walk through 190 million years of the Earth's history. It is the only place on Earth where one third of the story of life on this planet from 250 million years ago to 65 million years ago can be seen.

The underlying message was one of global citizenship and that if we start to understand and respect our special places, we begin to own them and, as a consequence, look after them.

In Professor Brunsden's words, 'The Earth is our unique and irreplaceable home'.

A sobering but uplifting thought.

Text & Photo by Gordon Simmons

Prof Denys Brunsden, OBE & Yvonne Welch, Chairperson of the Golden Cap Centre