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Lymington is a port town on the west bank of the Lymington River on the Solent, in the New Forest district of Hampshire, England.
The town faces Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, to which there is a car ferry service operated by Wightlink. It is within the civil parish of Lymington and Pennington. The town has a large tourist industry, based on proximity to the New Forest and its harbour. It is a major yachting centre with three . As of 2015, the parish of Lymington and Pennington had a population of 15,726.
Lymington itself began as an Anglo-Saxon village.Edward King (1990). 185455056X, Ensign. 185455056X 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. (2025). 9783864686658 ISBN 9783864686658 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. (2025). 9780300225037, Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300225037
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 New 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. A new library was added in 2002.
Lymington New Forest Hospital opened in 2007, replacing the earlier Lymington Hospital. This has a minor injuries unit but no accident and emergency facility. The nearest are at Southampton General Hospital, away, and the Royal Bournemouth Hospital, away.
The main Anglican parish church is St Thomas's in the High Street. (2025). 9780300225037, Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300225037 Lymington Town Hall, in Avenue Road, was opened in 1966.
Pennington is a village near Lymington, but is separated from the town by several schools with playing fields. Upper Pennington is a northern residential offshoot of Pennington, more rural in character, almost entirely surrounded by heath and farmland.
Lymington yacht basin and make up the former docks area known as Waterford.
/ref> The park includes formal gardens, a playground, a cricket ground and a sports field. The neighbourhood consists of a small southern triangle of residential and rural lanes, which include a manor house, church community hall, and All Saints' Church, Lymington. The church was built in 1909 by W. H. Romaine-Walker, architect of Danesfield House, Moreton Hall, Warwickshire, and the Tate, and a student of the High Victorian architect George Edmund Street.
Normandy is a coastal hamlet by a very small dock, and estuary. It includes the buildings Normandy Garth, Little Normandy and Normandy Farm. The last backs onto De La Warr House, an early 19th-century listed building.
Lymington has a wide range of shops and a large street market in the High Street, as well as three supermarkets: Waitrose, a small Tesco in the High Street, and a Marks and Spencer Food Hall.
In 2006, hundreds of residents signed a petition to prevent a new branch of the Argos retail outlet, fearing it would "lower the tone" of the area and attract a "certain calibre of customer". After the closure of Woolworths' high street stores in 2009, Argos applied to move into the empty premises and was rejected for a second time.
Retail chain 99p Stores, which had moved into the old Woolworths premises, were told to remove their shopfront signage, which appeared on all 103 of their stores across the country, for being "inappropriate and extremely gaudy".
A similar campaign in 2010 sought to prevent the pub chain J D Wetherspoon from opening a pub in the town. However, a second proposal by Wetherspoons in 2012 was successful and a pub named The Six Bells opened in 2013.
The proximity of the New Forest makes Lymington a popular base for walking, cycling and riding.
There are two active sailing clubs in the town. The Royal Lymington Yacht Club, founded in the 1920s as Lymington River Sailing Club, has over 3,000 members and runs major keelboat and dinghy events.Royal Lymington Retrieved 29 June 2016. The Lymington Town Sailing Club, founded in 1946, hosts a popular Lymington Winter Series known as the Solent Circuit.
Local radio stations are BBC Radio Solent on 96.1 FM, Heart South on 96.7 FM, Capital South on 103.2 FM, Easy Radio South Coast on 107.8 FM, Nation Radio South Coast on 106.0 FM and New Forest Hospital Radio, that broadcast local programming to patients from the New Forest Hospital in the town.
The Lymington Times and New Milton Advertiser is the town's local newspaper.
In Tom Clancy's Patriot Games, a Wightlink ferry heading from the Lymington ferry terminal is intercepted and a prisoner extracted in heavy seas. Several men on board the ferry are murdered.
The 1980 Christmas special of the ITV children's show Worzel Gummidge was filmed in the town during the summer of that year. During filming a sudden wind blew the titanium dioxide that was being used as a replica of snow into homes, shops and businesses, causing damage and a large compensation bill for the producers, Southern Television.
Lymington was occasionally featured in the 1980s BBC series Howards' Way.
The third season of the ITV crime drama series Unforgotten was partially filmed in Lymington, with the town standing in for the fictional Middenham.
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