The earliest settlement in the Lymington area was around the
Iron Age hill fort known today as
Buckland Rings. The hill and ditches of the fort survive, and archaeological excavation of part of the walls was carried out in 1935. The fort has been dated to around the 6th century BC. There is another supposed Iron Age site at nearby
Ampress Hole. However, evidence of later settlement there (as opposed to occupation) is sparse before
Domesday (1086). Lymington itself began as an Anglo-Saxon village. The
Jutes arrived in the area 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 whilst
limen is derived from the
Ancient British word
*lemanos meaning an elm tree. The town is recorded in Domesday 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 MPs until 1832, when its electoral base was expanded. Its representation was reduced to one member under the
Reform Act 1867, and it was subsumed into the New Forest Division under the
Redistribution of Seats Act 1885. Lymington was famous for salt-making from the Middle Ages up to the 19th century. There was an almost continuous belt of salt workings along the coast toward
Hurst Spit. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, Lymington possessed a military depot that included a number of foreign troops – mostly artillery but also several militia regiments. At the time of the
Napoleonic Wars, the
King's German Artillery was based near Portchester Castle and sent sick soldiers to Lymington or Eling Hospital. As well as Germans and Dutch, there were French émigrés and French regiments. They were raised to take part in the ill-fated
Quiberon Invasion of France, from which few returned (contrast the
Battle of Quiberon Bay, or
Bataille des Cardinaux, a 1759 victory). From the early 19th century, Lymington had a thriving
shipbuilding industry, particularly associated with Thomas Inman, builder of the schooner
Alarm, which famously raced the American yacht
America in the
1851 America's Cup. Much of the town centre is
Victorian and
Georgian, with narrow cobbled streets in the area of the quay. In 1859 the Roman Catholic church of Our Lady of Mercy and Saint Joseph was built to a design by
Joseph Hansom. Lymington particularly promotes stories about its
smuggling. There are unproven stories of smugglers' tunnels running from the old inns and under the High Street to the town quay. Lymington was among the boroughs reformed by the
Municipal Corporations Act 1835. In 1932 it was extended to include
Milton (previously an urban district), the parishes of
Milford on Sea and
Pennington, and parts of
Lymington Rural District, so extending it along the coast to the edge of
Christchurch. The borough of Lymington was abolished on 1 April 1974 under the terms of the
Local Government Act 1972, becoming an
unparished area in the district of
New Forest, with
charter trustees. The area was subsequently divided into the four parishes of
New Milton,
Lymington and Pennington,
Milford-on-Sea and
Hordle on 1 April 1979. A new library was added in 2002. ==Lymington today==