Adapted from a feature that first appeared in July 2025 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.
Lyme Regis is the place for fossils. Visit the Dorset town at low tide and I guarantee you’ll find something, even if you couldn’t spot a goose in a bath tub. The ammonite fossil shells are unmissable. I had my first prehistoric encounter within seconds of gaining the beach ⬇️:
It’s easy to get blasé about fossils, but just consider this for a few seconds. It was once a living creature, and died, perhaps, 70 million years ago. Now imagine some as-yet-unevolved animal sharing photographs of your remains 70 million years from now. Quite a thought. Image: Matt Brown
Lyme Regis is justly famous for its fossils, and for the work of fossil hunter Mary Anning (1799-1847). Anning and her brother Joseph made some stunning finds on this stretch of coast, including important examples of ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and pterosaurs.
Her life story is very well told above the beach at the superb Lyme Regis Museum, which stands on the site of her house and fossil shop. But the museum also draws us into the lives of other remarkable women associated with Lyme Regis. Jane Austen, for example, set much of Persuasion in the town. Meryl Streep brought it to the big screen in the adaptation of The French Lieutenant's Woman. And before you even reach the museum door, you must step over the the legacy of a famous London businesswoman, Eleanor Coade:
