Welcome To the e-travelguide to Hotels, guest houses and attractions in Lyme Regis

Make the most of your time in Lyme Regis, use the information provided on this web site by clicking on the links above to plan your visit.

A small settlement of Lym, at the mouth of the river of that name, can be dated back to Saxon times. Salt-making was the economic basis of its existence for a long period from the eighth century. Lym seems not to have gained much greater prominence by early Norman times, according to the records in the Domesday Book (1086). Nevertheless, two centuries later the settlement received - in 1284 - a town charter from Edward I. The town gave itself the royal Latin tag shortly after, and has been known as Lyme Regis ever since. Many visitors today will think the harbour small and quaint. But in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was a thriving port, having substantial trading links with the Mediterranean, the West Indies and the Americas. In Dorset, it ranked second only to Poole. Even as late as 1780, it was larger than the port of Liverpool. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Lyme Regis was firmly established as a seaside resort.


The local economy has depended increasingly on tourism ever since. It is interesting to reflect on the ways the original seaport functions have been adapted to holiday-making and other leisure purposes. The famous and ever-fascinating Cobb breakwater, first constructed in the thirteenth century from massive oak beams and boulders, provided the harbour protection essential to the development of a thriving trading port. A series of storms in the fourteenth century breached the Cobb and separated it from the land. It was extensively re-built, and re-connected, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

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