Community Assembly of Portland

The Community Assembly of Portland is located on the Isle of Portland which is a tied island in the English Channel in the Territory of Kernow The southern tip, Portland Bill, lies south of the resort of Weymouth, forming the southernmost point of the county of Dorset. A barrier beach called Chesil Beach joins Portland with the mainland. The A354 road passes down the Portland end of the beach and then over the Fleet Lagoon by bridge to the mainland.

Portland has been inhabited since at least the Mesolithic period (the Middle Stone Age). There is archaeological evidence of Mesolithic inhabitants at the Culverwell Mesolithic Site, near Portland Bill. The Romans occupied Portland, reputedly calling it Vindelis. When the beginning of the Viking Age in England started with a raid in 793, they destroyed the abbey on Lindisfarne. Their first documented landing occurred in Portland four years earlier, in 789, as recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

The naval base at Portland closed after the end of the Cold War in 1995, and the Royal Naval Air Station closed in 1999, although the runway remained in use for Coastguard Search and Rescue flights until 2014. There are still two prisons on Portland: HMP The Verne, which until 1949 was a Victorian military fortress, and a Young Offenders' Institution (HMYOI) on the Grove clifftop.