| YARMOUTH | ||||
By far the quickest (30 minutes) and cheapest crossing to the Isle of Wight is from Lymington to Yarmouth, which is the oldest small town on the island and is famous for its yachting. The castle is not very easy to see as it is small and is well hidden behind the buildings around it, but in the summer it is open to visitors, and has a Great Hall, Master Gunners parlour and a couple more things to interest the visitor, it was garrisoned up until the 19th century. Yarmouth may have been a Celtic settlement before the Romans came to Britain, iit was called Ermud which means 'muddy estuary' and during the 12th century the Norman Baron de Redvers built a town here and two centuries later the French sailed into the Solent and attacked and ransacked the town, this happened once more in the 16th century and Henry VIII decided to built his forts and castles to protect the island. Yarmouth is one of the oldest towns on the island and once it was the seat of the Governor of the island.
It has a small town hall built in the 18th century and stands over what was a market. There is a mace with Charles IIs coat of arms on top and his initials on the base. The church is 17th century. One of the Governors of the town, Sir Richard Holmes lived here and in 1584 the town was given a second Member of Parliament a distinction that was taken away from it by the Reform Bill of 1832 which actually took away both its MPs, it was later declared a 'rotten borough' and even had this status stripped away. The River Yar is on the west and the sea on the other and the marshy land to the south stopped the town expanding so it keep its charm and in the summer this can be seen by the crowds that flock to it,
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