Lyme

Jane Austen stayed in Lyme with her family in the summer of 1804 and used her impressions of the beautiful little seaside town as background for her novel Persuasion. 'a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see the charms in the immediate environs of Lyme, to make him wish to know it better.' Built as a coaching inn in 1601, the Lion as it was known in Jane Austen's time, stood in a yard behind the houses that front Broad Street today. In the middle of the nineteenth century the inn was extended forward by incorporating Broad Street houses into the whole. As the family of a retired country Parson, the Austens were more likely to have chosen to stay here at the slightly less fashionable and less expensive of the two available inns. With regard to the room with the bay window where the Musgroves watched Mr Elliot's curricle leaving Lyme, there are two possibilities. Either the inn was already leasing additional adjacent accommodation to meet the burgeoning demand following the trend for sea bathing, or Jane simply used artistic license to extend her mind's eye view. The Royal Lion enjoys a further literary connection with John Fowles's novel 'The French Lieutenant's Woman'. The inn and the surrounding area were used as the setting in the book which was filmed on location starring Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep. To the left of the entrance in this friendly, family run hotel, there is a cosy beamed lounge bar. And upstairs, just across the landing from the spacious and comfortable dining room is the small Edward VII lounge with its bay window and famous view of 'the principal street almost hurrying to the water.'