Place:Lymington, Hampshire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Lymington is a port town on the west bank of the Lymington River on the Solent, in the New Forest District of Hampshire. It is to the east of the South East Dorset conurbation, and faces Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight which is connected to it by a car ferry. The town has a large tourist industry, based on the proximity to the New Forest National Park and the harbour. It is a major yachting centre with three marinas. According to the 2011 census the Lymington urban area had a population of 15,407. If you were to also include the nearby parish of Boldre which includes Walhampton, normally considered part of Lymington, then the population in 2011 was 17,410.

Lymington was one of the boroughs reformed by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. Almost a century later in 1932, the borough had a major expansion. Its neighbour, Milton (previously an urban district) and the parishes of Milford and Pennington, and parts of other parishes, from Lymington Rural District were added to the borough, extending it west along the coast to the border with Christchurch.

Under the Local Government Act 1972 the borough of Lymington was abolished on 1 April 1974, becoming an unparished area in the district of New Forest, with Charter Trustees. The area was subsequently parished as the four parishes of New Milton, Lymington and Pennington, Milford-on-Sea and Hordle.

From the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century Lymington was famous for making salt. Saltworks comprised almost a continuous belt along the coast toward Hurst Spit. From the early nineteenth century it had a thriving shipbuilding industry, particularly associated with Thomas Inman the 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, giving an air of quaintness. The wealth of the town at the time is represented in its architecture.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Lymington.

Research Tips

Lymington is covered in Volume 4 of the Victoria County History for Hampshire

• GENUKI has a list of archive holders in Hampshire including the Hampshire Record Office, various museums in Portsmouth and Southhampton, the Isle of Wight Record Office and Archives.
• The Hampshire Online Parish Clerk project has a large collection of transcriptions from Parish Registers across Hampshire.
• A listing of all the Registration Districts in England and Wales since their introduction in 1837 together with tables listing the parishes that were part of each district and the time period covered, along with detailed notes on changes of parish name, mergers, etc. Do respect the copyright on this material.
• The three-storey City Museum in Winchester covers the Iron Age and Roman periods, the Middle Ages, and the Victorian period.
• Volumes in The Victoria County History Series are available for Hampshire through British History Online. There are three volumes and the county is covered by parishes within the old divisions of "hundreds".

A collection of maps on the A Vision of Britain through Time website illustrating the English county of Hampshire over the period 1832-1932 (the last two are expandible):

• The Hundreds of Hampshire, a map from HMSO Boundary Commissioners, dated 1832
• Hampshire showing parishes in their Rural Districts as of 1900, a map from the Ordnance Survey
• Hampshire showing parishes in their Rural Districts after the alterations of 1932, a map from the Ordnance Survey

• A group of maps of the post-1974 municipal districts or boroughs of Hampshire on Wikipedia Commons