Template:Wp-Lymington-History

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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 book (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 Second Reform Act of 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 Legion-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 1851. Much of the town centre is Victorian and Georgian, with narrow cobbled streets in the area of the quay.

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.