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Lymington Town Hall, Avenue road, Lymington, Hamsphire. England.

Lymington is a port on the west bank of the Lymington River on the Solent, in the New Forest district of Hampshire, England. It is to the east of the South East Dorset conurbation, and faces Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight which is connected to it by a car ferry, operated by Wightlink. The town of Lymington lies within Southampton and S.W. Hampshire and contains the villages of Beaulieu, Boldre, Hordle, Milford-on-Sea, Pennington and Sway. The town has a large tourist industry, and is situated near the beautiful New Forest. It is a major yachting centre with three marina’s. A beautiful, Georgian market town, Lymington ( population 14,330 ) is situated on the southern edge of the New Forest, between Southampton and Bournemouth and at the western end of the Solent. The town is world renown as a sailing resort; there are two large marinas Berthon and Haven and two sailing clubs RLYC and Lymington Town. Lymington has several interesting independent shops including some designer boutiques. On Saturday a market is held in the High Street, the origins of which probably date back to the 13th century. At the top of the High Street is the Parish Church, St Thomas Church ( built around 1250 ), from the bottom of the High Street a cobblestone road leads down to the Old Town Quay, still used as a base by commercial fishing boats.

The earliest settlement in the Lymington area was around the Iron Age hill fort known today as Buckland Rings. The hill and ditches of this fort still remain, and an archaeological excavation of part of the Walls was carried out there in 1935. It has been dated to around the sixth century BC. There is also another supposed Iron Age site at nearby Ampress Hole. Evidence for later settlement (as opposed to occupation) however is sparse before Domesday. Lymington itself began as a Anglo-Saxon village. The Jutes arrived in what is now South West Hampshire from the Isle of Wight in the 6th century and founded a settlement called limentun. The Old English word tun means a farm or hamlet while limen is derived from the Ancient British word lemanos meaning elm-tree. The town is recorded in the Domesday book of 1086 as Lentune. About 1200 the lord of the manor, William de Redvers created the borough of New Lymington around the present quay and High Street while Old Lymington comprised the rest of the parish. He gave the town its first charter and the right to hold a market. The town became a Parliamentary Borough in 1585 returning two MP's until 1832 when its electoral base was expanded. Lymington continued to return two MP's until the Second Reform Act of 1867 when its representation was reduced to one. On the passage of the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 Lymington's parliamentary representation was merged with the New Forest Division.

From the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century Lymington was famous for making salt. Salt works comprised almost a continuous belt along the coast toward Hurst Spit. From the early nineteenth century it had a thriving shipbuilding industry, particularly associated with Thomas Inman the builder of the schooner Alarm, which famously raced the American yacht America in 1851. Much of the town centre is Victorian and Georgian, with narrow cobbled streets, giving an air of quaintness. The wealth of the town at the time is represented in its architecture. Lymington particularly promotes stories about its smuggling history; there are unproven stories that under the High Street are smugglers tunnels that run from the old inns to the town quay. Lymington was one of the boroughs reformed by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. In addition to the original town, 1932 saw a major expansion of the borough, to add Milton ( previously an urban district ) and the parishes of Milford on Sea and Pennington, and parts of other parishes, from Lymington Rural District - this extended the borough west along the coast to the border with Christchurch.

The Lymington Open Air Sea Water Baths (or historic Roman Seawater Baths) is a life guarded open air lido in Lymington, Hampshire. Built in 1833 it is the oldest lido in the UK, and at 110 metres long by 50 metres wide it is also one of the largest in size and in volume with 1.7 million gallons of water. The baths reopened in 2010 following a campaign by local people who also completed the baths' refurbishment. The current sea water baths date back to 1833 when the Lymington Bath and Improvement Company was set up. The bath house was built shortly afterwards and is now the club house for the Lymington Town Sailing Club. As time went on the baths struggled to compete with others in the area, particularly at Bournemouth. In 1855 they were sold to George Inman who owned a boat building company further up the river. In 1886 the Lymington Sea Baths Company leased the baths from Inman. The baths continued under several different owners until 1929 when they were taken over the by the Lymington Corporation.The 1930s were something of a golden period for outdoors baths and lidos with people flocking to bathe on bank holidays in the summer. Today the baths are owned by Lymington and Pennington Town Council.

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Uploaded on September 16, 2016
Taken on July 1, 2013