This exhibition, created by Ken Gollop and Graham Davies aand staged in early 2008, captured the changing face of farms once prominent within the boundaries of Lyme Regis.

Up to the 1950s, Lyme's agriculture consisted of traditional small valley farms, mainly dairy, who sold their milk in the town with excess going to the Chard Junction milk factory 15 miles away. The largest farm within the town's boundaries was Rhode Barton (130 plus acres), followed by Rose Farm (Gales). Slopes Farm, Haye and Middle Mill were smaller. Upper Knapps and Lower Ware were no longer farmsteads by the 1930s and their fields were either rented or sold. Ranscombe was established in the 1950s but only for a couple of decades. It is now known as Lower Ware Farm and owned by the National Trust. The only mention of Woodmead Farm is on the 1905 map.

All the farmhouses are now private houses and many of the barns have been converted to holiday cottages. Most of the remaining land is rented to neighbouring farmers and there are two active smallholdings at Timber Hill and Dragons Hill. So there is still a farming tradition in Lyme despite many of the fields lying under tarmac and concrete. 

Here are a few of the pictures that formed part of this fascinating exhibition :

1923 and grass-cutting begins another farming year at Laundry Fields. The land is now the centre of the Anning Road housing estate   

Dodie Hodder haymaking at Slopes Farm which was very active in the Thirties.
It has since been bequeathed to the Woodland Trust and is a popular walk into the town centre.

Kate Froom with her son Len at Middle Mill Farm in the Thirties

Bob Rattenbury's father and daughter at Slopes Farm in the Fifties

Dick Wellman today rents the last acres to be farmed within the boundaries
of Lyme Regis. Even that land is threatened by landslips from the cliffs