
Meryl Streep - and the Cobb at Lyme Regis - feature on the cover of The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles...
I recently visited Lyme Regis, right on the western edge of Dorset where it meets Devon, a county Lyme seems to gravitate towards, rather than looking back through masses of green countryside towards the east of its own county.
I went there hoping to look for fossils, thinking of my childhood heroine Mary Anning, but in September 2011 it’s the 200th anniversary of her ichthyosaur find, so I will leave it until later to blog more about her and about fossils.
Instead, I will look this time at the Cobb, a harbour wall that featured in Jane Austen’s Persuasion and more recently in John Fowles’ book The French Lieutenant’s Woman – it was made even more memorable by the image of Meryl Streep standing, windswept, on the said wall in the movie.
I bought an old second-hand copy of the book to read while in Dorset. I like it, as it is penned in the style of a 19th century writer but with the benefit of Fowles’s insights from the perspective of the 20th century. The French Lieutenant doesn’t really feature, but the Woman of the title is vilified by the polite people of Lyme because of her indiscretions with him in the past. And then it becomes a romance between her and a fossil-collecting man about town…
But back to the Cobb. On the very first page of the book Fowles writes:
The Cobb has invited what familiarity breeds for at least seven hundred years, and the real Lymers will never see much more to it than a long claw of old grey wall that flexes itself against the sea.
The Cobb has existed since at least the 13th century, originally as a defence made of oak piles driven into the seabed and filled with heaped boulders. But the structure we see today, made of Portland stone, was built in 1820. So Jane Austen, who died in 1817, would have been visualising a slightly different wall.
It is certainly an irresistible attraction to tourists today. We visited on a scorching hot blue-sky day in August and as a result did little more than walk along Marine Parade, along the Cobb to the end and back again. And we were already worn out. Come walk with me…
Sitting down already…

Looking east from a shady shelter on the seafront at Lyme Regis - note the ammonite design of the street lamps
Lyme is old enough to have been mentioned in the Normans’ Domesday Book of 1086. By the 13th century it was a major port and King Edward I allowed the town to add “Regis” to its name in 1284 with the granting of a royal charter.
In the English Civil War, in 1644, the Parliamentarians (Roundheads) held out for eight weeks at Lyme Regis when besieged by the Royalists.
I had wondered why there is a “Monmouth Beach” at Lyme. It turns out the Duke of Monmouth landed here in 1685 at the start of his rebellion against James II. The Duke (James Scott) was leading a Protestant revolt against James’s Catholic rule after he took over from his older brother, Charles II. Monmouth was an illegitimate son of Charles and thought he had a good claim to the throne himself. It didn’t end well for him – Bloody Assizes and all that…
One thing that surprised me about the Cobb is that the top surface is sloping from the harbour side down to the outer sea. So it would be positively dangerous to stand here in wet and windy weather!
The Cobb is made of Portland stone, full of fossils.

Portland screws (conical gastropod Aptyxiella portlandica) and osses' 'eads (bivalve Laevitrigonia gibbosa)
John Fowles, although born in Essex, lived out his later life in Lyme Regis and was curator of the museum from 1979 to 1988.
There’s some more about Lyme Regis on Wikipedia and the tourism site has a good guide in PDF form – which will show you all the attractions of Lyme I missed on my very brief visit. Must go again!
Looks like an inviting place to live, but expensive?
I really have no idea!
However, there are lots of statistics about it here.
I can’t really interpret them very well, but it strikes me it is not a particularly well-off place, just like many small rural areas in Britain. Although at least it avoids the deprivation of some inner city areas. Dorset also gives the impression of being not a very rich county, apart from hotspots like Sandbanks in Poole.
But of course the people are lovely and its natural beauty is priceless!
Lyme is not far from us in a car but too much of a trek on a bus to go often. (Though the bus journey goes right along the coast and is an event in itself!) You are fortunate to have visited on a sunny day – and I agree about that sloping wall!
I know what you mean. We were going from Poole and would have preferred a bus, but it is a slow bus, stopping everywhere along the route, and by the time we got there we would have had something like an hour before we returned if we were to get back to Poole by mid evening…
One day I WILL return!
As for the weather, if only it had been overcast! I would have gone fossil hunting…
Best wishes
🙂
Lovely post. I never realized that the scene of the fateful jump from the wall in Persuasion was the same spot as featured in the french Lieutenant’s Woman, which I read & saw decades ago. Interesting to see the town in your photos today, when in my imagination, it lives in Jane Austen’s era.
Thank you so much for commenting. Although the architecture is still more or less the same, I think the beach is a bit busier these days than in Jane Austen’s…
Best wishes 🙂
It’s lovely to know that this is the wall (in real time) from which Louisa Musgrove fell; I hadn’t made the connection. Nice pictures Squirrel.
Thank you for your kind words…
🙂
The pictures are beautiful! Its like each picture has its own story. Most of them look like they belong to a historical legend. I guess this place is a great tourist area, it may not have the usual shopping malls, but I think each corner where you might go has a story about it.
A lovely tour of a lovely little town 🙂