Georges Square

Accessed via Monmouth Street or through a passageway from Coombe Street, this small square was once occupied by The George Inn, the town's largest and most important inn up until the middle of the eighteenth century. The square, to the rear of the inn, is likely to have consisted of both stables and a loading yard for packhorses, as well as a market area. 

According to The Lyme Regis Society, a traveller reported the George Inn was so large, with so many buildings and enormous stables, that when the gates were shut for the night the area within resembled a small town. 

After 1750 the George Inn declined as the smaller and more fashionable Three Cups Inn in Broad Street became popular. 

The George was lost in a disastrous fire of 1844 which spread as far as Broad Street, destroying forty houses and six inns along Coombe Street. 

Today, the square is more of a triangle and is an enclosed garden, home to the town’s war memorial.

An inscription carved in stone on a pillar on the south gate entrance to the garden reads: “This open space was presented to the inhabitants of this borough in perpetuity by James Tisdall Woodroffe ESQ. J.P C.C Advocate General of Bengal of Ware, Lyme Regis, and the same was laid out and enclosed by the council accordingly in the year 1908".