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Location:
Europe,
United Kingdom,
Lyme Regis
Category:
Beach / Coastal view
Description:
View of the beach and harbour wall
at The Cobb
Location Information:
Lyme
Regis is well-known for The Cobb, a
harbour wall full of character and
history. It is an important feature
in Jane Austen's novel Persuasion
(1818), and in the film The French
Lieutenant's Woman, based on the
1969 novel of the same name by local
writer John Fowles.
The Cobb was of economic importance
to the town and surrounding area,
allowing it to develop as both a
major port and a shipbuilding centre
from the 13th century onwards.
Shipbuilding was particularly
significant between 1780 and 1850
with around 100 ships launched
including a 12-gun Royal Navy brig
called HMS Snap. The wall of the
Cobb provided both a breakwater to
protect the town from storms and an
artificial harbour.
The centre of Lyme Regis. Notice the
ammonite street light
decoration.Well-sited for trade with
France, the port's most prosperous
period was from the 16th century
until the end of the 18th century
and as recently as 1780 it was
larger than Liverpool. The town's
importance as a port declined in the
19th century because it was unable
to handle the increase in ship
sizes.
It was in the Cobb harbour, after
the great storm of 1824, that
Captain Sir Richard Spencer RN
carried out his pioneering lifeboat
design work.
A 1685 account describes it as being
made of boulders simply heaped up on
each other: "an immense mass of
stone, of a shape of a demi-lune,
with a bar in the middle of the
concave: no one stone that lies
there was ever touched with a tool
or bedded in any sort of cement, but
all the pebbles of the see are piled
up, and held by their bearings only,
and the surge plays in and out
through the interstices of the stone
in a wonderful manner."
Local
Weather:
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