Your Free Independent Guide to Lyme Regis
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your free independent guide to Lyme Regis @JURASSICMAGS jurassiccoastmagazine.co.uk Your local holiday cottage specialist... Whether you’re after a dog-friendly break, romantic hideaway, beachside cottage or luxury large home - we’re sure we have the ideal escape for you. Choose from hundreds of stunning coastal, waterside and rural cottages located throughout the South West... For special offers and a free copy of our brochure call us or check out our website. www.toadhallcottages.co.uk 01297 443550 44 Church Street, Lyme Regis, Dorset DT7 3DA 2 INTRODUCTION | Lyme Magazine Your local holiday cottage specialist... WELCOME TO jurassiccoastmagazine.co.uk Whether you’re after a dog-friendly break, origins romantic hideaway, beachside cottage or & evolution luxury large home - we’re sure we have the We set sail in 2014 with our pilot edition of Lyme Magazine. Our aim ideal escape for you. Choose from hundreds was to help promote businesses in and around Lyme Regis, and to tell the story of the wonderful folk who call ‘The Pearl of Dorset’ home. of stunning coastal, waterside and rural Five years on, we now feature people and places from all along the Jurassic Coast, and have distributed over 270,000 FREE annual cottages located throughout the South West... visitors magazines. Our objective is simple... provide visitors to The Jurassic Coast with a handbag-sized comprehensive companion, helping them get the best from their visit. designed in Lyme Regis by We have arranged the content into our trademark localised areas, in handy colour-coded sections, giving each coastal community a chance //coastline.agency to show off its unique identity and charm. We hope you enjoy our handy little FREE guide book. Please share it Whilst every care has been taken to ensure that For special offers and a free copy of our with friends and family or recycle it after use. the content of this publication is accurate, Coastline Publishing Ltd accepts no liability to any party for loss brochure call us or check out our website. or damage caused by errors or omissions. © Copyright 2018 \\ Coastline Publishing Ltd. WES DOWELL Images \\ Matt Austin Images + Lyme Bay Photography www.toadhallcottages.co.uk 01297 443550 @JURASSICMAGS founder & designer Words \\ Ross Packman 44 Church Street, Lyme Regis, Dorset DT7 3DA 2 3 Lyme Magazine | MAP We’re proud to print our magazine locally in South West England using Green Energy, FSC Certified Paper and vegetable based inks, minimising our impact on the environment. Please share this printed copy with friends and family, and recycle after use. 4 Lyme Magazine | MAP MAP | Lyme Magazine As a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Jurassic Coast sits alongside Lyme the Grand Canyon and Galapagos Islands as an internationally important location of scientific and cultural significance. Chesil Encompassing 96 miles of Devon and Dorset seashore, the Jurassic Coast offers visitors Axe a 185 million-year trip through geological history. Stretching from Orcombe Point near Exmouth in the West to Swanage’s Old Harry Sidmouth Rocks in the East, the Jurassic Coast presents an almost complete chronological sequence of rock formations covering the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, and the fossils contained within these strata have provided scientists with an unrivalled insight into the processes that have shaped life on earth. Otter Today the area has become one of the UK’s most popular tourist destinations. Exe 4 5 Lyme Magazine | LYME REGIS Introducing Lyme Top Left: The Cobb dates back to the year 1313 Top Right: The iconic Lyme Regis Museum Middle: The Town Mill, an award-winning attraction Regis Lower left: Gun Cliff at sunrise Lower right: Fishermans nets on The Cobb Situated on the county border at the heart of the Jurassic Coast, Lyme Regis is a picturesque resort town well-deserving of its title as ‘The Pearl of Dorset’. Lyme boasts a rich heritage both The seafront offers numerous Broad Street sits the Regent Cinema, historical and literary, as well as a busy opportunities for food and a 1930’s picture house recently year-round schedule of live events, refreshment, from traditional pub fare devastated by fire, but due to soon including the Fossil Festival, Lifeboat to the obligatory fish and chips, while rise phoenix-like from the ashes. Week and Guitars on the Beach, the beautifully refurbished Marine To the Eastern end of town lies the attracting thousands to the town Parade Shelters take centre stage, Artisan’s Quarter. Featuring some each year. providing a sheltered spot to sit and of the oldest buildings in Lyme, take in the view, backed by the lovingly Lyme’s most iconic landmark, no visit including the recently refurbished maintained Langmoor and Lister to the town is complete without a Lyme Museum, this charming district Gardens. stroll along the sinuous length of the boasts a wide array of independent Cobb harbour wall. Immortalised in The commercial heart of Lyme Regis, cafés and art galleries, as well as the the French Lieutenant’s Woman, this Broad Street and Silver Street provide town’s Tourist Information Centre and striking structure has long sheltered all the high street essentials you’d enviably positioned Marine Theatre. the town’s commercial fishers and expect, as well as ample shopping leisure craft from the predations of opportunities and a generous number the winter storms. of eateries. Pride of place at the top of Words: Ross Packman 6 Lyme Magazine | LYME REGIS LYME REGIS | Lyme Magazine 6 7 Lyme Magazine | LYME REGIS FEATURE The home of Mary Anning From chequered beginnings to modern brushes with celebrity, the history of Lyme Regis Museum is just as dynamic and engaging as that of the town it serves. Uniquely for a town of its size, Lyme’s museum was a purpose- From 1978 until 1988, the museum’s resurrection was overseen by built building, commissioned in 1901 by former Mayor Thomas E renowned author and Lyme resident John Fowles. As Honorary D Philpot and designed by Architect George Vialls, also responsible Curator, Fowles was central to the formation of Friends of the for the adjacent Guildhall. The museum’s construction required the Museum, the body of volunteers still responsible for manning the clearance of several of the close-built houses in the eastern part museum today. In the nineties, as a Patron of the museum, Fowles of town, including the birthplace of Lyme’s most famous daughter, also supported widespread renovation work to the building itself, Mary Anning. ultimately culminating in Lyme Regis Museum winning the top national prize, the Gulbenkian, in 1999. Philpot’s grand vision hit something of a speed bump when, on completion of the museum building, it then sat vacant for nearly In 2017, the Museum celebrated the grand opening of the brand twenty years. During the First World War the structure was put to new Mary Anning Wing. Stood on the seaward side of the museum use as a Red Cross depot, but once again fell into disuse with the and constructed in zinc and glass, the new addition features an cessation of conflict. accessible geology gallery telling the story of its famous namesake. In addition, the wing hosts the museum’s extensive fossil collection, The museum’s fortunes changed in 1920, when Philpot’s niece a state-of-the-art learning space for visiting groups and a new lift, Caroline gifted the building to the Borough. A two-room exhibition enabling access for all to the museum’s first floor. finally opened in March 1921, thanks to the efforts of Dr Wyatt Wingrave. Devoted to archaeology and geology, Wingrave’s A special inauguration ceremony was held on the 22nd September, exhibition combined local curios with his own collection and where the museum’s most famous patron, Sir David Attenborough, included artefacts still on display today, including the town fire delivered a speech to over 200 museum supporters and funders, engine, wooden tracery from Buddle Bridge and cannon balls from before joining local schoolchildren in investigating some locally- the Siege of Lyme. discovered fossils in the Fine Foundation Learning Centre. Speaking on the day, Sir David said “This is a delightful museum supported The beginnings of a fossil collection were also present. “So far it so generously local people and local charities and as a patron I’m is a nucleus”, Wingrave wrote, “but it is hoped that in time, with happy to help out in any way I can”. the help of loans and gifts, it will become worthy of Lyme’s great reputation and of the building itself.” Today, the Lyme Regis Museum offers visitors the chance to explore the natural and human history of ‘The Pearl of Dorset’ in Over the next decade the museum slowly grew, thanks largely to state-of-the-art facilities. the support of Lyme-based historian Cyril Wanklyn and Dr W D Lang FRS, Keeper of Geology at the British Museum , who took an active hand in the development of the museum’s fossil collection. lymeregismuseum.co.uk With the onset of the Second World War, the museum was considered secondary to the needs of the war effort. The collection was relegated to storage as the building saw use as an ARP report Words: Ross Packman post, the cellar doubling up as an air raid shelter. At war’s end, no new curator was found and the museum, though opened daily for casual visitors, went into a gradual decline. @JURASSICMAGS In the 1960’s, a group of local people, notable glass engraver Laurence Whistler among them, resolved to save the ailing building. The storm-wracked eastern wing was condemned and demolished on safety grounds, with the rebuild completed in 1969.