Visit nearby lyme Regis - here's some history

The history of Lyme Regis stretches back as far as the 8th century, when monks distilled salt water from the sea. In the 13th century it developed into one of the major British ports, although small by modern standards, and in 1588 it sent two ships to battle against the Armada.

It is in a small bay between Church Cliffs on the east and Chippel Bay (to Seven Rock Point) cliffs on the west.The town and the river valley is in a syncline of Liassic clays (Shales-with-Beef and Black Ven Marls) with cliffs of the harder Blue Lias limestones and shales on either side. This bay corresponds to the area where the soft Liassic clays come down almost to sea-level. The Parade (the promenade or sea-wall) lies at the level of the uppermost Blue Lias beds, unlike the cliffs both east and west where the top of the Blue Lias limestone-shale sequence is higher. The Blue Lias tends to produce vertical cliffs while the Liassic clays above form sloping, slumped cliffs. For the most part the town thus lacks the wall of vertical cliffs at the base, but has the slumped, clay slopes coming down almost to sea-level. This circumstance provides easy access to the shore but results in some landslipping problems like those of Black Ven but on a more limited scale.

Lyme Regis was once a popular haunt for smugglers but it later became a haven for fossil hunters. Among the most famous was Mary Anning who lived in Lyme Regis nearly two hundred years ago and has been described as 'the greatest fossilist who ever lived'. She and her family were responsible for some exceptional discoveries including the first ichthyosaur.

Quite when the area now occupied by the town of Lyme Regis was first settled by our ancestors is buried in the mists of time. The remains of an ancient hill fort have been found nearby and a Roman villa was unearthed some years ago in the neighbouring parish of Uplyme so it is likely that some human presence was to be found in this sheltered valley from very early times. The earliest recorded settlement here dates from AD 774 when King Cynewulf granted land on the west bank of the River Lym to the Abbey at Sherborne: they needed salt for preserving foodstuffs and at Lyme they had a ready source of salt water in the sea and a sheltered site where they could extract the salt. The area now known as Sherborne Lane is thought to be the site of the salt-extracting activities of the monks.Within the town itself is St Michaels Church, where Mary Anning is buried and where a stained glass window has been named after her. The church is set on a cliff overlooking much of the town. The next Mary Anning spot is the Philpot Museum, which is built on her birth place. The museum contains local artifacts and outside is a Coade Stone paving slab, reflecting another piece of local history as the material was invented and manufactured locally by Mrs Eleanor Coade. Continuing the theme linking Lyme Regis to fossils and Mary Anning, there is a dinosaur museum, called Dinosaurland, in the old congregational church where Mary Anning was baptised.