Featured Pic: J. E. and S. R. stand at the far end of Lyme Regis harbour wall. The “Cobb” has protected the harbour since 1328. It features in Jane Austin’s novel Persuasion and the film The French Lieutenant’s Woman. The palaeontologist Mary Anning lived and worked along the Jurassic Coast where she discovered the first complete Ichthyosaur.
Film props at Montacute House for the filming of T.V. series Wolf Hall
Cambridge and Cardiff University excavations on Ham Hill showing Bronze Age roundhouses and ditch
John Hanning Speke’s memorial in Church of St Andrew, Dowlish Wake. Speke was the discoverer of the source of the River Nile. He died in 1864 from gunshot wounds after a hunting accident
The Somerset Cider Brandy Company Limited
Blue plaque commemorating Captain Hardy and the grammar school he attended. As Lord Nelson lay dying at the Battle of Trafalgar he bid Hardy a final farewell: “Kiss me Hardy”
The quarterdeck of HMS Victory where Lord Nelson was mortally wounded. Captain Hardy suffered a near miss and his shoe buckle was shot away. John Scott, Nelson’s personal secretary and confidant, was not so lucky and a cannonball cut him in half in the opening exchange. Nelson, shot through the spine, fell on the same spot an hour and a half later. His uniform, on display at the National Maritime Museum, is stained with his comrade’s blood to this day.