Lyme Regis is twinned with St. George in Bermuda. While other UK towns and cities twinned with a European counterpart, Lyme Regis decided to opt for something more exotic and relevant to our history, a finer choice could not have been made.

One of the towns most famous sons, Admiral Sir George Somers, was shipwrecked in 1609 after being blown off course for Virginia in what is now the USA. The islands were named "Virgineola" and later due to a certain alleged Regal indiscretion became "Somers Isles" and a little later Bermuda. A biography can be found here: Bermuda Online

We have been loaned a map of Lyme Regis that was produced in 1841. By kind permission we have been allowed to scan the image in great detail. It is, by and large, what Mary Anning would have grown up seeing and would have changed very little from when Jane Austen stayed in the town a few years before.

It is available for viewing but no permission is given for printing or reproduction in any way. Nor is permission given to include it on any web site or other internet/intranet vehicle.

The original is in the British Museum

You will need Adobe PDF reader to view this document. It is free to download from here if you do not already have it.

Click here to view the map of Lyme in 1841

Note: the map is around 364 kb in size, which will take seconds on ADSL and a minute or so on dial-up.