Lyme Regis ( ) is a seaside town in west Dorset, England, west of Dorchester and east of Exeter. Sometimes dubbed the "Pearl of Dorset",Love Lyme Regis website it lies by the English Channel at the Dorset–Devon border. It has noted fossils in cliffs and beaches on the Jurassic Coast, a World Heritage Site and heritage coast. The harbour wall, known as The Cobb, appears in Jane Austen's novel Persuasion, the John Fowles novel The French Lieutenant's Woman and the 1981 film of that name, partly shot in the town.
A former mayor and MP was Admiral Sir George Somers, who founded the English colonial settlement of Somers Isles, now Bermuda, where Lyme Regis is twinned with St George's. In July 2015, Lyme Regis joined Jamestown, Virginia, in a Historic Atlantic Triangle with St George's. The 2021 census gave the town a population of 3,742.
History In Saxon times, the abbots of Sherborne Abbey had salt-boiling rights on land adjacent to the River Lym, and the abbey once owned part of the town. Lyme is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086. In the 13th century, it developed as one of the major British ports. A royal charter was granted by King Edward I in 1284 when "Regis" was added to the town's name. The charter was confirmed by Queen Elizabeth I in 1591.
John Leland visited in the 16th century and described Lyme as "a praty market town set in the rootes of an high rokky hille down to the hard shore. There cummith a shalow broke from the hilles about a three miles by north, and cummith fleting on great stones through a stone bridge in the bottom."
In 1644, during the English Civil War, Parliamentarians withstood an eight-week siege of the town by Royalist forces under Prince Maurice. The Duke of Monmouth landed at Lyme Regis at the start of the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685.
Lyme grew in size as a result of seaside tourism in the 18th century bought about by new purported health benefits of the sea air/taking the waters, and the establishment of the turnpike road system. The town then benefited at the expense of continental destinations during the Napoleonic Wars when wealthy tourists were unable to travel abroad. This led notable people including Jane Austen to visit, who set part of her final novel Persuasion in the town; and quoted the place as her "happiest spot for watching the flow of the tide."
The population was 3,376 by the time of the 1841 census.
Between 1811 and her death in 1847 Mary Anning, a geological pioneer, found and identified Jurassic marine reptile fossils in cliffs to the east of Lyme Regis.Lyme Regis Museum. Retrieved 17 November 2020.
On New Year's Day, 1915, was torpedoed, the first major U-boat kill of World War I. A local lifeboat delivered bodies to the Pilot Boat Inn in Bridge Street. Lassie, the owner's dog, licked the face of Seaman Cowan, who was believed dead, and seemingly brought him back to life. The namesake of this cross-breed became a legend of books, radio, film and television.
In 1965, the town's railway station was closed under the Beeching Axe. The station was dismantled and rebuilt at Alresford, on the Mid Hants Watercress Railway in Hampshire. The route to Lyme Regis was notable for being operated by aged Victorian locomotives. One of these Adams Radial Tank engines is now preserved on the Bluebell Railway in Sussex. A West Country Class steam locomotive No. 34009 was named "Lyme Regis" after the town.
In 2005, one event to mark the bicentenary of Admiral Nelson's victory at the Battle of Trafalgar was a re-enactment of the arrival of the news aboard the Bermuda sloop .
Geography
Lyme Regis is a coastal town in West Dorset, west of Dorchester and east of Exeter. It lies in Lyme Bay, on the English Channel coast at the Dorset–Devon border. At the 2011 census, it had a population of 3,671. The town has grown around the mouth of the River Lim (or Lym) which drops from a plateau at an altitude of about before flowing around south and south-east to the sea. Its name is of British origin and probably cognate with the Welsh llif meaning flood or stream.E. Ekwall, 1981, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names (4th ed.), Oxford. Historically there were mills along its length. Its lower reaches coincide with sections of three recreational footpaths: the Wessex Ridgeway, Liberty Trail and East Devon Trail.Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 scale Explorer map 29, Lyme Regis & Bridport.
The town's beaches and cliffs are noted for fossils. They form part of the local Heritage Coast and the more extensive coastal World Heritage Site, commonly referred to as the Jurassic Coast – stretching for from Orcombe Point near Exmouth in the west to Old Harry Rocks in the east. The coastal exposures provide a continuous sequence of Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous rock formations spanning some 185 million years of the Earth's history. Localities along the Jurassic Coast include a range of important fossil zones.
The Blue Lias and Charmouth Mudstone geological formations host a multitude of remains from the Early Jurassic, from which epoch good fossil records are rare. Many remains are well preserved, including complete specimens of important species. Many of the earliest discoveries of dinosaur and other prehistoric reptile remains were made in the area around Lyme Regis, notably those discovered by Mary Anning (1799–1847). Significant finds include Ichthyosaurus, Plesiosaurus, Dimorphodon, Scelidosaurus (one of the first armoured dinosaurs) and Dapedium. The town holds an annual Mary Anning Day and Lyme Regis Fossil Festival. A fossil of the world's largest moth was discovered there in 1966.
To the south-west are Poker's Pool, Seven Rock Point and Pinhay Bay and to the north-east is Charmouth. The coast is subject to landslips that expose the Jurassic-age fossils to be found on the beaches. "The Dowlands Landslip" occurred on 24 December 1839, west along the coast in Devon, in an area belonging to Bindon Manor. About of wheat and turnip fields were dislodged when a great chasm more than across, deep and long was formed. The crops remained intact on the top of what became known as "Goat Island" among the newly formed gullies. On 3 February 1840 a smaller landslip occurred nearby. The phenomenon attracted many visitors, and farmers charged sixpence to view it."The Undercliff" , Philpot Museum website, Lyme Regis. Retrieved 1 September 2006. The area is now known as The Undercliff and is of interest for its diverse natural history.
Landslides continued to cause problems in the area into the 21st century. In 2005, work began on a £16 million engineering project to stabilise the cliffs and protect the town from coastal erosion. The town's main beach was relaid and reopened on 1 July 2006. On the evening of 6 May 2008, a section of land slipped onto the beach between Lyme Regis and Charmouth. Police described the landslip as the "worst in 100 years". [Includes video] It called for diverting the South West Coast Path inland between Lyme Regis and Charmouth via the Lyme Regis Golf Course.
Demography In the 2021 census, the town's parish had a population of 3,742.
+ Census population of Lyme Regis parish Census Population Female Male Households Source 1921 2,882 1931 2,620 1951 3,200 1961 3,526 1971 3,400 1981 3,450 1991 3,760 2001 3,513 1,918 1,595 1,660 2011 3,671 2,028 1,643 1,770 2021 3,742 1,964 1,778 1,840
Transport Lyme Regis railway station served the town between 1903 and 1965; it was a stop on the Lyme Regis branch line to . The nearest National Rail station is now at Axminster, away, with South Western Railway services to , and .
Bus services are operated predominantly by First Hampshire & Dorset, with routes connecting the town to Axminster station, Beer, Bridport, Seaton and Weymouth.
Religion
The parish church of St Michael the Archangel, above Church Cliff, dominates the old town. Dating from the 12th century, it was originally a tripartite structure with an axial tower. Transepts were added in about 1200 and two aisles in the 13th century. A new church was built east of the tower and transepts early in the 16th century and the old chancel and aisles removed. The old nave was shortened in the 19th century.John Betjeman, ed., 1968 Collins Pocket Guide to English Parish Churches; the South. London: Collins; p. 175.
Mary Anning is buried there and commemorated in a stained-glass window provided by members of the Geological Society of London, an organisation that did not admit women until 1904.
The Baptist church was founded in 1653 and has been on the same site since 1699.Well illustrated own history site. Retrieved 2 August 2020. Bethany Chapel, an independent Evangelical (Christian Brethren) church, celebrated its centenary in 2014.Bethany Chapel website.
Education The Boat Building Academy, a registered charity runs courses in traditional boatbuilding and furniture making from its site at Monmouth Beach.Boat Building Academy website.
Governance
There are two tiers of local government covering Lyme Regis, at parish (town) and unitary authority level: Lyme Regis Town Council and Dorset Council. The town council meets at the Guildhall on Bridge Street, which was completed in 1889. The town council's offices are at the nearby Guildhall Cottage on Church Street.
Lyme Regis was an ancient borough, with the earliest known charter dating from 1284. Until 1604 the borough only covered a small part of the parish; in that year the borough was extended to match the parish. The borough was reformed to become a municipal borough in 1836 under the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. The municipal borough was abolished in 1974 to become part of the new district of West Dorset. The modern town council was created as a successor parish council for the old borough at the same time.
West Dorset was abolished in 2019 under the 2019 structural changes to local government in England, when Dorset Council was established as a unitary authority. Since then, Lyme Regis has been part of the Lyme and Charmouth ward which elects one member to Dorset Council.
Lyme Regis is part of the West Dorset constituency for elections to the House of Commons. From 1295 to 1868 it was covered by the Lyme Regis constituency.
Landmarks The Cobb
The first record of the Cobb, the town's harbour wall, is in a 1328 document describing it as having been damaged by storms. It was made of oak piles driven into the seabed, with boulders stacked between. The boulders had been floated into place, tied between empty barrels. A 1685 account describes it as, "an immense mass of stone, of a shape of a demi-lune, with a bar in the middle of the concave: no one stone that lies there was ever touched with a tool or bedded in any sort of cement, but all the pebbles of the see are piled up, and held by their bearings only, and the surge plays in and out through the interstices of the stone in a wonderful manner." The Cobb wall provides a breakwater to shield the town from storms and separate Monmouth and Cobb Gate beaches.
The Cobb had economic importance in and around the town, creating an artificial harbour that enabled the town to develop as a port and shipbuilding centre from the 13th century onwards. Shipbuilding was significant between 1780 and 1850; nearly 100 ships were launched, including the 12-gun Royal Navy brig HMS Snap. Well-sited for trade with France, the port's most prosperous period was from the 16th century until the end of the 18th. In 1780, the port was larger than the Port of Liverpool but its importance declined in the 19th century, as it could not handle ships of increasing size.