This place obviously made a great impression on JA : she visited it more than once, spending parts of the summers of 1803 and 1804 there and seemed to be charmed by it if her description of it in Chapter 11 of Persuasion is anything to judge by:

After securing accommodations, and ordering a dinner at one of the inns, the next thing to be done was unquestionably to walk directly down to the sea. They were come too late in the year for any amusement or variety which Lyme as a public place, might offer. The rooms were shut up, the lodgers almost all gone, scarcely any family but of the residents left; and as there is nothing to admire in the buildings themselves, the remarkable situation of the town, the principal street almost hurrying into the water, the walk to the Cobb, skirting round the pleasant little bay, which in the season is animated with bathing-machines and company; the Cobb itself, its old wonders and new improvements, with the very beautiful line of cliffs stretching out to the east of the town, are what the stranger's eye will seek; and a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate environs of Lyme, to make him wish to know it better. The scenes in its neighbourhood, Charmouth, with its high grounds and extensive sweeps of country, and still more its sweet, retired bay, backed by dark cliffs, where fragments of low rock among the sands make it the happiest spot for watching the flow of the tide, for sitting in unwearied contemplation; the woody varieties of the cheerful village of Up Lyme; and, above all, Pinny, with its green chasms between romantic rocks, where the scattered forest-trees and orchards of luxuriant growth declare that many a generation must have passed away since the first partial falling of the cliff prepared the ground for such a state, where a scene so wonderful and so lovely is exhibited, as may more than equal any of the resembling scenes of the far-famed Isle of Wight: these places must be visited, and visited again to make the worth of Lyme understood.

Here is a link to the the Lyme Regis page from the ROP Persuasion Gazetteer.

At the time JA was visiting Lyme it was beginning to be transformed from a fishing village to a seaside town providing amusements and bathing opportunities.

This area of Dorset was popular with the Royal family who often attended Weymouth during the summer months- more on this later today . Weymouth is not far from Lyme as you can see from John Carey's map of Dorsetshrie of 1812( you can see it just to the right of "Portland Bill"):

Lyme as a place of pleasure was promoted and developed during the 18th century by one Thomas Hollis- and yes, I think it no coincidence that "Hollis" was also the surname of the first husband of JA's character Lady Denham in Sanditonand that he was also the source of her wealth ;-) Sandition was, if you recall, a small fishing village that was developed into a "would-be" fashionable bathing resort...just like Lyme ;-)

Thomas Hollis (1720-1774) was an interesting character. This is what the Oxford Diciotnary of National Biography has to say of him:

a political propagandist, Hollis was born in London on 14 April 1720, the only child of Thomas Hollis (d. 1735) and the daughter of a Mr Scott of Wolverhampton, in whose household he lived until he was four or five years old.

His great-great-grandfather had been a Baptist whitesmith in Rotherham, Yorkshire, and his great-grandfather established a London branch of the cutlery business. Hollis was educated at the free school in Newport, Shropshire, until the age of nine or ten, then in St Albans, and for fifteen months in Amsterdam, where he learned Dutch, French, writing, arithmetic, and accounts in preparation for a business career. He lived with his father, who died in 1735, and then under the guardianship of John Hollister, and was trained to public service partly by John Ward of Gresham College, London. He took chambers in Lincoln's Inn, though without reading law, from February 1740 to 1748. By then he was rich, having inherited from his uncle as well as his father and, in 1738, his grandfather. In 1748–9 he toured Europe with his friend Thomas Brand (later Brand Hollis), and, during 1750–53, largely on his own, meeting many leading French philosophes and several Italian painters.

Back in England he was an ardent member of the Society of Arts, for a time chairing its committee on the polite arts. A member himself, he proposed Piranesi for membership of the Society of Antiquaries, gave numerous commissions to Cipriani, and, as one of Canaletto's best friends in England, commissioned six paintings from him. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1757. Sometimes accused of being an atheist, Hollis was a rational dissenter who supported Caleb Fleming's ministry at Pinners' Hall. In common with many contemporaries he was rabidly anti-Catholic and campaigned vigorously against popery; he became convinced that he was the intended victim of a Catholic plot. He had many connections, among them liberal churchmen such as Francis Blackburne and Theophilus Lindsey, John Wilkes, several peers, and especially the elder William Pitt (though this friendship was suspended when Pitt accepted a peerage in 1766 and resumed only about 1771).

Hollis believed citizenship should be active: individuals had an important role to play in public life. He partly fulfilled this responsibility by charitable work as a governor of Guy's and St Thomas's hospitals, and a guardian of the asylum and Magdalen Hospital. Applauding Wilkes's cause privately, he deplored political bribery and declined to stand for parliament at Dorchester in 1761. He believed that legitimate government was contractual, and that the people as constituent authority were entitled to replace tyrants by new governments. As a republican Hollis provided material for Catharine Macaulay's History of England. Yet he was also a patriotic Englishman and warm supporter of the house of Hanover. His heroes were Elizabeth I, Oliver Cromwell, and Pitt, all of whom extended England's international standing, as well as John Milton, his particular hero.

He was a benefactor, amongst other institutions of Harvard University and owned an estate of 3000 acres at Corscombe near Beauminster. He kept, however, a suite of rooms in the Three Cups Hotel at Lyme and bought up much of the derelict/slum property in Lyme in order to demolish them and improve the town.

He also created the first public promenade by purchasing land on the shore to create what JA would have referred to as The Walk( it is now part of
Marine Parade"

He knocked down a series of warehouses to clear a site for the building of Lyme's Assembly Rooms complex and these were completed in 1775 just after Hollis's death. These are the Rooms that JA talks about in this letter.

Lyme however never really achived the type of fashionable status that Thomas Hollis wished for: for example, Harriette Wilson( whom we encountered in our last Letters Group read as the Mistress of Lord Craven )

She did not really care for the place it would seem, and writing about it in 1825 of a visit she made in 1806 confirms JA's casutic remarks in Letter 39 about the type of visitors it attracted, bold Queerlooking people, just fit to be Quality at Lyme , proving these remarks are not an example of JA'sr singular wit ,but very probably the truth acknowledged by other people- and indeed this is hinted at in the description of Lyme in the Guide to the Watering and Sea Bathing Places by Mr Phillips-see the entry in the Gazetteer, linked above ;-):

Lyme Regis is a sort of Brighton in miniature, all bustle and confusion,assembly -rooms, donkey-riding,raffling etc., etc. The society was chiefly composed of people of very small independent fortunes , who for economy has settled at Lyme Regis; or of such who required sea-bathing

Fanny Burney also wrote about Lyme in not very complimentary terms though the surrounding scenery was pleasing to her:

Monday, August 8 ,1791.

We proceeded to Bridport, a remarkably clean Town, with the air so clear & pure, it seemed a new climate. Hence we set out, after Dinner, for Lime , & the Road through which we travelled is the most beautiful to which my wandering destinies have yet sent me. It is diversified with all that can compose luxuriant scenery, & with just as much of the approach to the sublime, as is in the province of unterrific beauty. The Hills are the highest, I fancy, in the South of this country, the boldest, & noblest; - the vales of the finest verdure, wooded & watered as if only to give ideas of finished Landscapes; while the whole, from time to time, rises into still superior grandeur, by openings between the heights that terminate the view with the splendour of the British Channel. There was no going on in the carriage through such enchanting scenes; We got out upon the Hills, & walked till we could walk no longer.

The descent down to Lime is uncommonly steep; & indeed it is very striking, from the magnificence of the Ocean that washes its borders. Chideock, & Charmouth, two villages between Bridport & Lime, are the very prettiest I have ever seen.

During the whole of this Post, I was fairly taken away, not only from the World, but from myself, & completely wrapped up & engrossed by the pleasures - wonders - & charms of animating Nature, thus seen in fair perfection.

Lime, however,brought me to myself; for the part by the Sea, where we fixt our abode was so dirty and fishy that I rejoiced when we left it.

Fanny Burney Journals and Letters ,Volume 1 OUP,( 1972) p25.

We know however that JA must have had an affection for the place: her description in Persuasion is testament to that ,as is all that happens at Lyme in that novel: Anne Elliot recovering her bloom, gaining the admiration of strangers and demonstrating her superiority of mind in her kindness to Benwick and in her ability to take control of a dangerous situation ;-)

Here for those of you who have never been to Lyme are some of our photographs of "Granny's Teeth" on the Cobb taken in 2002 when some of the bravest (?!)amongst us recreated that scene where Louisa Musgrove came to grief....:-)

And here is Joan Hassel's woodcut illustration from the Folio Society's 1972 edition of Persuasion