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Lyme Regis Dorset Photographs
Below are the photos currently available. All images are available in larger versions. This site is updated often so please check back soon.
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Title: Lyme Regis Seafront
Place: Lyme Regis
About: Like many other summer visitors we love walking along Lyme Regis seafront in the evening. The light and the views across the harbour and onto the Cobb and then in the other direction towards the town ......
Photograph Added: 11th September 2010
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Title: Harbour View
Place: Lyme Regis
About: The pretty tranquil scene of Lyme Regis harbour today is in stark contrast to its heyday as a thriving fishing and trading port. Like most of our coastal harbours the majority of the boats in the harb......
Photograph Added: 25th August 2010
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Title: Yacht Reflections
Place: Lyme Regis
About: Boats of any type look good in a reflection but these yachts in Lyme Regis harbour with their tall masts made the perfect subject for a photograph.
Photograph Added: 11th August 2010
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Title: Reflections in the Harbour
Place: Lyme Regis
About: The early evening at Lyme Regis was the perfect time to take photographs of the moored boats and the reflections were crystal clear.
Photograph Added: 11th August 2010
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Title: Christmas Lights across the Harbour
Place: Lyme Regis
About: This unusual photograph of the Christmas lights reflected in the harbours at Lyme Regis was taken sitting on the beach with the tripod at its lowest setting. A few more seconds in the position and the......
Photograph Added: 19th December 2007
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View area map / aerial photograph.
About Lyme Regis Dorset.
Lyme Regis is located in West Dorset very close to the Devon border it is world famous for its abundant fossils and is also a designated area of outstanding natural beauty. The town is often referred to as ‘The Pearl of Dorset’ because of its beauty and natural charm. Lyme Regis has a population of about three and half thousand, and nearly forty five percent of this figure are retired.
The town was known by the Romans as Lym Supra Mare. Lyme takes its name from the river Lym which means a torrent of water.
The history of Lyme Regis is documented as far as the 8th century when monks distilled salt water from the sea. The Royal Charter was granted by King Edward I in 1284, with the addition of 'Regis' to the town's name. By the 13th century Lyme Regis had developed into one of the major British ports even though the harbour is tiny by modern standards. In a good place for trade with France, the port's most prosperous period was from the 16th century until the end of the 18th century and in 1780 it was larger than Liverpool. Lyme Regis importance as a port declined by the 19th century as it was unable to handle the increased size of ships.
Since 1996 Lyme Regis has been twinned with the town of St. George’s in Bermuda. Admiral Sir George Somers, the Mayor of Lyme, claimed Bermuda for England when he was shipwrecked off the coast in 1609. The ‘twinning’ arrangement started when the respective town criers, Richard Fox and Bob Burns, met at the world town crying championship at Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1978. Today a commemoration parade takes place each year on the 28th July with the Town Crier of Lyme Regis and the Town Crier of St. George’s playing a role.
Fossil collecting has taken place for at least the last two hundred and fifty years, the most celebrated fossil collector being Mary Anning who was born in Lyme in 1799. Mary was the first person to discover a complete ichthyosaur, plesiosaur a fearsome flying reptile. Even today collectors and amateurs continue to make new discoveries, this is one of the attraction of fossil hunting you never know what is out there waiting to be found. In 1995 a new species of Ichthyosaur was found below Golden Cap and perhaps despite all the years of collecting there still remains species new to science to be discovered.
Lyme Regis is world famous for The Cobb, a harbour wall which was built from Portland Admiralty Roach stone. The Cobb has featured in the novels by Jane Austen , a one time resident of Lyme, and in the The French Lieutenant's Woman by local writer John Fowles. The novel was later adapted as a film starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Iron and it was nominated for five Academy Awards: The Cobb provides both a breakwater to protect the town from storms and an artificial harbour. Several times over the years The Cobb has been destroyed or severely damaged by storms the wall seen today was completely reconstructed in Portland Admiralty Roach, a type of Portland stone, in 1820.
The Lyme Regis Coast Protection Scheme was started by West Dorset District Council in the early 1990s. The scheme aims to provide long term coast protection for the town and to reduce damage caused by the land slipping. This work is vital in order to save the town from any more destructive landslides and also coastal erosion. In April 2005 work stepped up a gear on the multi-million pound coast protection and land stabilisation scheme, today there is a large scale extension to the Beacon Rocks breakwater at the end of the Cobb, and realignment of the North Wall Rockery near the seafront. Operations to stabilise the town's frontal slopes are being strictly monitored and controlled to ensure that landslips do not happen during construction.
Today Lyme Regis is a captivating town with a simple unique charm. Broad Street, the main road through the town, offers a wide range of shops, public houses and hotels all jostling for a place as the street slopes steeply to the sea each building seems to rely on its neighbour for mutual support. When all the defence work has been completed Lyme Regis will once again be the Pearl of Dorset but don’t let the work put you off visiting the area as there is still so much to see and do. Now that the sand is back and much of the heavy equipment moved Lyme Regis already seems rejuvenated and ready to meet its public
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