Hello again, I'm Rob - The Country Traveller. I'm in the lovely
south coast town of Lymington today. iIm going to have a walk around to see
what's going on at the moment but also to look at some of the
historical places of interest in the town -
so why not come and join me? We'll start our walk in Lymington High Street.
The large house that you can see on the right is called Monmouth House
and it's probably the oldest complete domestic house in Lymington,
dating from the late 1600s. Coming up on our left now we can see St
Thomas's church. it's 11 o'clock and the bell in the
ornate bell tower is ringing the chimes.
The church also has a lovely gold weather vane.
Let's take a very quick look inside the church.
Comfortable chairs have replaced the pews here.
We'll start making our way down the High Street walking towards the war memorial.
In this comparison between today and 90 years ago
we can see that the buildings have changed little but the vehicles have!
The war memorial speaks for itself.
Nice piece of street art in the pavement here - I don't know what it represents
though. Further down the high street we see a
lovely example of georgian architecture. This house was the home of the St Barbe
family - prominent local citizens.
A road on the left of the high street takes us down to the St
Barbe museum and art gallery. This was refurbished a few years ago
and is well worth a visit.
Back on the high street we walk down the hill until we reach the Angel and Blue
Pig pub - one of the oldest pubs in the town.
In the 18th century coaches left for Southampton
and to London from here almost daily. Being on the coast Lymington was heavily
involved in smuggling in the 17th and 18th centuries and the
Angel inn was one of the places where the smugglers met.
Allegedly there was a tunnel that ran from under the Angel down to the
seashore. Smuggled goods included tea, coffee,
wine, lace and spirits, particularly brandy.
Continuing on down the high street we come to the Stanwell House hotel
a lovely place to stay if you're in the
area.
Carrying on, what is this we can see further down
on the pavement? It looks like a gold letter box.
It is a gold letter box painted in recognition of sailor Sir Ben
Ainsley a Lymington resident, who was the first person to win medals in five
different olympic games in sailing events.
Further down the hill we cross the road into Quay Hill,
a lovely cobblestone area of shops restaurants and pubs
that lead down to the Town Quay.
The couple in front of us now have just hired bikes to explore the area.
They have to push them until they get to the end of the street though.
We're arriving at the quay now. In centuries gone by this was a very rough
area, full of ale houses and men who spent too
long inside of them.
The Ship Inn was built in 1850, a relatively modern building by some
Lymington standards.
This comparison shows that the outside of the building hasn't changed much in
the last 90 years.
This is the mouth of the Lymington river which flows into the Solent
and then into the English Channel. As you can see
lots of people enjoy messing about in boats.
This is the Isle of Wight ferry coming in now.
The crossing to Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight takes about 30 minutes.
It's a lovely day to be out on the water.
Walking further along the quay we come up on this monument.
This must have been a very big deal for the town at the time -
imagine what a change that would have made to people's lives.
We're coming now to Lymington's seawater baths.
These are the oldest open air sea water baths in the UK
The baths first opened in 1833.
With interest growing in preserving these historical sites for future
generations, in 2012 the baths gained grade 2
listed status.
Keeping the bathing experience up to date the baths now have the south
coast's biggest inflatable obstacle course.
We'll carry on along the side of the sea water baths
and admire the yachts. I suspect for most of us
we will be admiring them from afar.
If you do fancy buying a boat this might be the place for you.
There's a wide range of boats for sale.
This is probably more in my price range.
Continuing past the yacht brokerage we come to a large open area
which is now a nature reserve this is where Lymington's prosperity really took
off in the 12th century. Really? Yes!
For more than 700 years Lymington was a principal manufacturer of salt,
extracted from seawater up until the end of the 18th century.
This was the biggest area of sea salt production in the country
and it brought great wealth to Lymington the salt workings, or salterns, included
evaporating ponds, boiling houses, wind pumps and docks for transporting coal in
for the boiling houses and salt out to the markets. In later
years much of the salt went to the Americas. By
1660 as much coal for the salterns was handled
at Lymington as in London.
The trade had ceased by 1845, mainly killed off by the coming of the
railways. Cheaper salt from the Cheshire mines
could be readily transported around the country by rail.
We'll turn around now and walk back past the yachts
and a very inquisitive black-headed gull.
We'll walk up this street with lovely pastel coloured houses.
A couple of nice Georgian townhouses coming up on our left.
We're coming up to some walls now. Is a wall interesting?
These are. The wall that we can see here is a traditional brick wall with
strengthening pillars every so often. The old wall is leaning
over into the road. It's been strengthened by these metal plates and
rods which are keeping the wall from falling
into the road.
Compare that with these walls...
We're in Church Lane now, famous for its wavy walls,
also known as crinkle crankle walls. These are built with only a single brick
width - the wavy shape gives the wall extra strength.
This wavy wall on the right was built by the author Dennis Wheatley in the 1940s
when he lived here.
A lovely message for our care workers
here.
The wall that we're coming up to on our left now is the original wavy wall in
Church Street. This was built in 1798 and it's still
standing. It's thought to have been constructed by
Hanoverian soldiers when they were in exile in Lymington
from the Napoleonic Wars. This wall design was apparently common in
Northern Germany.
The wall on the right marked the western boundary
of the ancient 13th century borough. The foundations of the walls
clearly reveal a variety of materials and are thought to be part of the
original walls.
We're coming towards the end of our walk now. We'll continue up Church Street
until we arrive back at St Thomas's church.
And here we are back at St Thomas's church or Wetherspoon's pub,
whichever takes your fancy, I suppose. The clock shows one o'clock so our walk
took two hours. I'd love to read your comments below and
if you've enjoyed the walk please give us a thumbs up and don't
forget to subscribe to The Country Traveller channel.
Thanks for watching and see you next time ...