The Construction of Weymouth Marina
Weymouth used to be much much smaller! The area which is now the shopping centre was a separate town called Melcombe Regis, and over the years, major reclamation projects all linked to the development of the Port and the building of the Railway Station by I K Brunel in 1857 saw the footprint of the town grow massively.
This left an unfortunate and scruffy part of the harbour called ‘The Backwater’ and it is this part of the River Wey that is now Weymouth Marina. Following a Brief to Developers from Weymouth and Portland Borough Council in the early 1990’s, Dean and Reddyhoff created the marina by removing and diverting an old cross-harbour sewer (large and smelly!), removing an old weir, and dredging the muds to create deep water berthing for yachts. The original purpose of the weir by the way, was to contain the raw sewage that was continuously discharged into the upper reaches of the river.
Ashore, an old school building had to be demolished, and this made way for us to widen a pinch-point in Commercial Road which had annoyed everyone for years. In due course the facilities building was erected, and the car park and waterside walkway were all landscaped and surfaced. Pontoons were installed on an as-and-when basis, to accommodate the increasing number of yachts year on year.
As the marina developed, it gave confidence to other developers in the area, and the redevelopment of the Town centre was finally completed, and old wharves and engineering yards have since been redeveloped for waterside houses and flats.
All very trendy, and a far cry from Weymouth’s original claim to fame, the introduction to England of the Bubonic Plague in 1348!
