Aimee Durnell gave the Club a fascinating talk today on "Secret Lymington". Aimee is an artist, as well as a historian, and her husbad manages Buckland Rings (for Hampshire County Council) and the Salterns, so she has  good sources of information. She also has a stall on Lymington Saturday Market.

Aimee gave an extensive overview of little known facts about Lymington., starting at Buckland Rings, founde as an Iron Age Settlement. In recent years, there had been proposals to covert it into a dry ski slope, but, after local opposition, Hampshire C.C. bought it in 1989, and designated it a historic zone, to conserve it for posterity.

Lymington Saturday Market has existed since 1256, taking advantage of the wide High Street , planned by the first Norman Lord of the Manor. The dimensions of many of the older building still conform to the original Norman plans (5 1/2 yards wide, with burgage plots behind, 110 yards long.

Shipbuilding was important and the port hosted more vessels than Portsmouth, until the river silted up. The salt industry then took over, evaporating sea water in coal-fed boiler houses on the Salterns, supplying 10% of Englands' salt rquirements, and also exporting across the Atlantic, as well as to Europe. Charles St.Barbe acquired most of the salt pans, and made a fortune, buying the 1765-built town house of the aristocratic Burrard family in 1828.The collapse of the sea salt industry in the 1830's (undercut by Northwich rock salt) forced him to sell.

Yacht building took over as Lymington's main industry, with the Inman shipyard building the famous America's Cup racing yachts Alarm, and Lulworth for the Weld family in 1830. The Inman shipyard stil operates as Berthon.

Lymington's other notable feature are the crinkly-crankly walls, totalling 11 (of the nationwide total of 90), offering the strength of a double brick wall with the economy of a single brick wall. Most were believed to have been built by French Royalist troops and Napoleonic prisoners, the most recent by Denis Wheatley in Church Lane in the 20th Century.

The Chairman thanked Aimee for a much-appreciated talk, indicating that a return visit to the Club would be most welcome.