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What's the story here?

Goathorn Point is a densely wooded finger of land, bordered by the marshy inlets along Poole Harbour's southern shore and by smaller islands to the west. Surrounded by woodland and farmland, it sits in a secluded natural setting near the harbour entrance. It offers anchorage outside the channel fairway, in depths of 2 metres or more, and is generally considered one of Poole Harbour's best all-weather anchorages.




Approaches via Poole Bay and Harbour provide a minimum draft of 6 metres CD. After branching off the main harbour entrance channel, there is a short stretch with a minimum depth of 1.2 CD before reaching the deeper waters of South Deep. Check the tide to confirm there is sufficient draft in the initial approaches. If you draw more than 1.5 metres, you must check the tide tables carefully to ensure you have enough water throughout your stay. That said, vessels with a draft of up to 1.7 metres can generally enter and leave at low water. Anchoring just outside the marked channel is the standard practice at Goathorn Point. Some boaters report finding depths of over 2 metres at mean low water near Goathorn Pier, but this varies.

This is a popular spot during the season. For the best spots, arrive early, as the area can get busy with 20-30 boats on a nice evening. Although anchoring itself is free, Poole Harbour Commissioners require harbour users to pay harbour dues where applicable, and patrol boats may check vessels within the harbour. The daily harbour dues for recreational vessels [2026] in Poole Harbour set by the Poole Harbour Commissioners (PHC) are £1.07 per metre of overall vessel length per day (including VAT).

How to get in?

The approaches to the entrance, with its tidal flow, are detailed in Navigating Poole Harbour .




Anchor according to the draft and conditions, anywhere from the entrance to South Deep up to Cleavel Point and beyond. Stay clear of the fairway, moorings and clearly marked oyster beds. Anchoring is prohibited in the vicinity of an underwater cable, well charted and marked by shore beacons, laid between Furzey and Green Islands and the mainland. Likewise, avoid fouling the ground chain of the four private moorings east of the pier.



Harbour cruise boats and the oil workers' ferries supporting the oil rig on Furzey Island frequently use this channel, so do not anchor in a way that might obstruct the fairway. The channel edge is marked by red and green lateral marks, but another channel within it, marked by red and green buoys, denotes the area to keep clear for the continuous flow of harbour traffic. At Goathorn, the channel is marked only with steel posts/buoys, but the south side is deeper and offers more room to moor.

Once clear of these and you find a spot, the creek bottom is all soft mud, so if you do touch it, it will do little harm. The harbour's deep, cloying black mud offers excellent holding.


Goathorn is somewhat sheltered by the harbour islands, but it can be uncomfortable when a contrary wind and tide set the boat dancing. You can avoid this by moving out to the channel's edges and away from the full run of the tide. But keep an eye on the sounder, as much of Poole Harbour shelves rapidly once you're outside the main channel. Its most exposed wind direction is northeast round to east, where, at high tide, a 1½-mile fetch can be created. The best anchorages are in the reach between Cleavel and Goathorn points, particularly at its southern end.




Landing is not permitted at Goathorn Point, but you can land at high water on the beautiful, rustic shore overlooking Newtown Bay, south of Cleavel Point. Newtown Bay's central marsh divides its channels east and west. The western channel runs close to the southern shore, so you can land by dinghy. This is only possible at high water, as everything is mud at low water.

Why visit here?

The origins of the name 'Goathorne Point' are uncertain. It may come from either of two Old English elements: gát, meaning 'goat,' or gote, meaning 'gut' or water channel/outlet, combined with torr or ower, meaning a bank, promontory, or raised shoreline.




The name first appears in 1286, during the reign of King Edward I, who ordered a planned port town to be built on the site. Documents recorded it as Gotowre super Mare, meaning 'Gotowre-on-the-Sea.' The peninsula's shape reinforced the shift to 'horn'. In Old English, hyrne means 'horn'; in maritime topography, a horn is a curved, narrow spit or promontory projecting into the water. The heathland was used for livestock grazing, and Gotowre shifted in the local dialect to Gottowre, eventually becoming Goathorn, or Gothorn, meaning 'the horn-shaped peninsula where goats are kept.'




Newtown Bay, the marshy inlet between Goathorn and Cleavel points, takes its name from King Edward I's ambitions. In 1286, he ordered a new port and town, called Nova Villa 'Newton', to be built here. The following year, he granted the planned Nova Villa a charter allowing it to hold two weekly markets and an annual fair. But neighbouring Ower Quay was already well established, and it soon became clear that such an ambitious development was not viable. Some development did take place, however: historic maps of Poole Harbour, including one from as late as 1597, mark a Newton settlement.




The 1st Edition of the 1811 Ordnance Survey map shows only buildings around the present Newton Cottage and does not name the area Newton. This suggests that, by this point, the settlement had declined to the point of no longer being noteworthy. No traces of historic buildings associated with the planned town have ever been discovered. The current Newton Farmhouse, or Newton Cottage, dates to the late 17th or early 18th century and has since been extensively modernised. The area's most distinctive man-made feature today is Goathorn Pier, with its jetty, where barges used to transport Purbeck Ball Clay to Poole Harbour.




Purbeck clay has been used for thousands of years and is said to feature in a third of all fine pottery ever made in England. It is prized for its whiteness and the qualities it develops when fired, making it ideal for tableware, bathroom ceramics, and applications that must withstand high temperatures. First mined in the 17th century for tobacco pipes, the clay was soon shipped to London for tableware. In the 18th century, Josiah Wedgwood adopted this high-quality clay, sparking a thriving industry in this quiet rural backwater.




Packhorses carried the clay to wharves on the River Frome, but this was too slow for the large-scale commercial extraction the Staffordshire potteries required. The 'Middlebere Tramway' addressed this bottleneck in 1806. It ran from the main workings at Norden, near Corfe Castle, to a wharf on Middlebere Creek in the southwest corner of Poole Harbour, where workers transferred the clay to Poole Town Quay. The horse-drawn plateway was one of the first railways established in southern England and the first in Dorset. It was followed in 1840 by the 'Furzebrook Railway', which ran from the clay pits near Furzebrook and West Creech to Ridge Wharf .




In 1854, a pier was built at Goathorn Point, with a rail line leading to the clay pits at Newton. It was purposefully constructed as a timbered jetty reaching into deep water to load Purbeck ball clay onto ships bound for Poole, bypassing heavily silted tidal alternatives like Middlebere Creek. The 'Newton Tramway' wagons were initially horse-drawn. In 1870, a small steam locomotive, Corfe, was introduced and locally nicknamed Tiny for its diminutive size. In 1907, the 'Newton Tramway' was extended to Norden by the 'Norden & Goathorn Railway', where it became known as the 'Fayles Tramway'. The 'Middlebere Tramway' was then linked to this, and after 101 years of continual use, the original 'Middlebere Tramway' to the Middlebere Wharf was discontinued.




In its heyday, the Goathorn line hauled tons of clay for transhipment to the pottery at Poole and carried passengers, schoolchildren, and workers. After almost a century in service, it saw little use and was finally abandoned in 1937. The section crossing Newton Heath was lifted in 1940, leaving no working line north of Norden. The Goathorn pier closed during the Second World War, when the peninsula was used as a bombing range and military practice area. After the war, transport shifted increasingly to more flexible lorries, contributing to the decline of tramways and the mainline railway throughout the clay workings. The remaining ground lines were finally abandoned in 1970. Today, the remaining wooden piles of the old jetty and the railway routes stand as a historical reminder of this industrial clay-mining railway network.




Today, Goathorn Point offers boatmen a peaceful anchorage in calm waters. Shut in by the dense coniferous plantations along the Goathorn Peninsula and the thickly forested Brownsea, Green and Furzey Islands, and by the low-lying meadows of the southern shore that rise to heathland and coniferous plantations, it is an extraordinarily beautiful location. It offers an escape from the bustling ferry port on the northern shore and the Poole conurbation. A place to gently swing at anchor, surrounded by wildlife, and look out over the southern shore's numerous points, bays, channels, and marshy inlets that give the harbour its lake-like appearance. A place to sit in the cockpit and look up at the stars at night, with so little light pollution.

What facilities are available?

There are no facilities at this remote and sequestered anchorage.


Poole Harbour Useful & Emergency Contacts
Poole Harbour Commissioners (PHC / Harbour Master): For general harbour inquiries, harbour dues, and Vessel Traffic Services.
+44 (0)1202 440 200 | pooleharbourcommissioners@phc.co.uk | Poole Harbour Commissioners | Ch. 14 [Poole Harbour Control / VTS]
Address: 20 New Quay Road, Hamworthy, Poole, Dorset, BH15 4AF.


Harbour Control Officer: For any emergency within the harbour.
+44 (0)1202 440 230 | harbourcontrol@phc.co.uk | Ch. 14 (or 16) [Poole Harbour Control]

Poole Bridge:	+44 (0)1202 674 115	Customs & Excise:	+44 (0)1202 685 157
Police:	+44 (0)1202 552 099 (Ext. 3276)	Doctor:	+44 (0)1202 679 234
Dentist:	+44 (0)1202 672 138	Hospital:	+44 (0)1202 665 511
Chemist:	+44 (0)1202 678 001	Dolphin Taxi:	+44 (0)1202 777 879
Tourist Information:	+44 (0)1202 253 253

With thanks to:

John Binder CMM Poole Quay Boat Haven & Port of Poole Marina manager. Photography with thanks to Graham Rabbitts, Tom Montgomery and Michael Harpur.