Sea Maidens at Durdle Door

Lulworth Castle, the magnificent home 
of the Weld family, was destroyed by fire in 1929 and amidst the tales of woe from the inhabitants came another strange 
story, that all the  maidservants had mysteriously disappeared. 

They were never seen again after the 
night of the fire and the local story has 
it that  all twelve of the young girls had 
gone for a walk along the cliff path to 
Durdle Door and had been washed 
into the sea from the forty foot high arch 
of the rock.

A former naval commander living in retirement at Poole recounted his 

experience back in the 1930's off the coast of Lulworth when a wild crescendo 

of screams tore the night air. 

" I leapt up the companion ladder, my throat scalding with fear. Desperately I sought to

penetrate the wall of darkness to the north, frantically searching to divide water from shore as the shrieking inferno raged about me. Then the screaming stopped as abruptly as if the waters had quenched it for ever and a small evanescent form rose on what I could just distinguish as the foreshore, not two hundred yards from my boat. It was the figure of a child. As it developed substance I saw it was a young girl. Her white expressionless face jerked awkwardly in a macabre dance, soon she was joined by another, and another. At once the foreshore was peopled with ten or a dozen girlish wraiths prancing and leaping in a mournful travesty of a childhood game. They were a ghastly spectacle and utterly joyless. Suddenly the figures were still as if restrained by a noiseless command, grew faint and were gone. I forced my eyes to stare harder but the curved foreshore was empty."

There are many legends of strange sea creatures along the coast of the South West of England such as the Veasta. This is a  large sea creature, part seahorse, part fish.

It has been spotted swimming off Chesil Beach near Portland numerous times. The first documented report was in 1457, it was seen again by the historian Rev John Hutchens in 1757,and was seen again in Church Ope Cove on Portland in 1965.

The remains of a strange creature was washed up on Burton Bradstock beach just a few miles down the coast in the 1980's and it was believed at the time to be the Veasta.

Another strange oddity found around the Cornish coast is the Whooper of Sennen Cove 

which makes a whooping sound from inside a thick cloud of mist. It would 

appear in clear weather over the cove signifying a severe storm was approaching.

It had the power to stop any fisherman from passing through the cloud of mist to 

the sea when a storm was imminent.

The Whooper deserted the cove when two fishermen, determined to get to the fishing 

grounds, beat their way through the mist with flails. They should have

heeded the whooper’s warning  because neither were seen again!

Falmouth has  its own resident sea monster called Morgawr ( Cornish for Sea Monster).

There have been many sightings since 1926 and is  described as having  a  stout body with a very long neck and black smooth skin like a seal lion. The local fishermen always blame a poor catch and bad weather on sightings of the monster.

 Locals believe that the monster only appeared after a German submarine U28 torpedoed a British merchant ship during W WI with loss of all on board. The creature was reported to have been at least 60 feet long shaped like a crocodile with webbed feet and a powerful tail.

There have been numerous sighting since and one man claimed to have taken a photo of the Morgawr lying in the water off Mawnan. The stretch of coastline between Rosemullion Head and Toll Point is known  as Morgawr’s Point due to the many sightings along this stretch of the coast.

A skeleton of what some people believe to be a Mawgawr was found washed up on  Charlestown beach near St Austell in 2017.