a Georgian townhouse climbing the hill above Lyme Regis

Built in the early 1800s, when Lyme was filling with Bath-stone houses for the sea-bathing trade, this townhouse stands four storeys tall on one of the steep streets that fall towards the Cobb. The front is rendered and painted a soft chalk-grey, with a six-panel door beneath a fanlight and the original twelve-pane sashes running up the elevation. Inside, the proportions are taller than the narrow plan suggests: a stone-flagged hall, a staircase that turns through the full height of the house, and reception rooms with their cornicing and shutters intact.\n\nThe principal drawing room sits at first-floor level, where the hill does the work the architect intended — from the two front windows the rooftops drop away and the eye reaches the grey line of Lyme Bay, a glimpse rather than a panorama, framed and the better for it. Below, the kitchen opens to the rear at garden level, flagged and cool, with a range recess and a door to the walled garden. The bedrooms occupy the upper floors, the principal taking the same southern aspect and the same sliver of sea.\n\nBehind the house, the walled garden is the surprise. Cut into the slope and held by old rubble-stone walls, it climbs in terraces planted with fig, climbing rose and a fan-trained pear, with a paved sitting area that catches the afternoon light. The town is below you — the Cobb, the fossil beach, the Marine Parade all within a few minutes on foot — but the walls keep the garden quiet, the kind of enclosure that takes the wind off the bay and holds the warmth into the evening.