Come off the Lymington ferry and you’re straight into Yarmouth, a tiny town of old streets and a square at the mouth of the Western Yar. By the ferry is Yarmouth Castle, begun in 1546–7 as the last fort in Henry VIII’s chain of coastal defences and now run by English Heritage. The pier, opened in 1876, is the longest timber pier in England still open to the public. In St James’s Church, a marble statue of Admiral Sir Robert Holmes supposedly started life as Louis XIV: Holmes seized it unfinished from a French ship and had it finished with his own head. The church guidebook admits the face looks more like Louis. The old railway line beside the Yar Estuary is now a path to Freshwater.
© Lewis Clarke / Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0
