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Coordinates: 51°04′36″N 1°01′44″E / 51.0767°N 1.0289°E / 51.0767; 1.0289

Lympne
Lympne Castle
Lympne  Lympne shown within Kent
Population	1,516 [1]
OS grid reference	TR121352
Parish	Lympne
District	Shepway
Shire county	Kent
Region	South East
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	HYTHE
Postcode district	CT21
Dialling code	01303
Police	Kent
Fire	Kent
Ambulance	South East Coast
EU Parliament	South East England
UK Parliament	Folkestone and Hythe
List of places: UK • England • Kent

Lympne (pronounced /lɪm/) village is situated on the once sea cliffs above the Romney Marsh in Kent. It lies approximately 11 km (7 miles) west of Folkestone, 2 miles west of Hythe and 17 km (11 miles) east of Ashford.

In Roman times Lympne was known as "Portus Lemanis", from which the modern name is derived. It lay at the end of the Roman road from Canterbury, known today as Stone Street. It was the location of a "Saxon Shore fort", and, according to the Roman "Notitia Dignitatum", it was garrisoned by a "numerus Turnacensium" from Tournai in northern Gaul.^[2] Its remains are situated at the bottom of the south-facing cliffs. In Anglo-Saxon times the fort was given the name "Stutfall", meaning "fold in which a stud, or herd, is kept".^[3]

St. Stephens church and Lympne Castle overlook Romney Marsh, the church being significantly older, and close by Lympne Hill figures in the Doctor Syn stories.

From 1923 onwards Lympne Aerodrome was home to the Lympne light aircraft trials and air races. In the 1930s it was the starting point for several long distance record flights, including a solo one to Cape Town by Amy Johnson in 1932, and also ones by her later-to-be husband Jim Mollison. Jean Batten later flew from Lympne to Darwin, beating Johnson's long-distance record, in 1934. The airport has now been closed and turned into an industrial estate.

Lympne has a village shop, hairdresser and public house (County Members) and straddles the B2067 road from Hythe, Kent to Aldington, Hamstreet and Tenterden. The nearest railway station is at Westenhanger. Lympne is also well-known for John Aspinal's Port Lympne Zoo, which occupies the ridge of hills upon which the village stands. Nearby Newingreen is reputedly the site of England's first motel on the A20.

Lympne in fiction

In H.G. Wells's 1901 novel First Men in the Moon, the English narrator Bedford — the sole survivor of the Moon expedition — attempting to land the antigravity sphere anywhere on Earth, has the good fortune to land it on the seashore at Lympne, reasonably close to his departure point. A local boy enters the antigravity sphere without Bedford's permission, and accidentally activates it ... sending himself and the sphere into space, never to return.

External links

• A comprehensive history of the village
• The First Men in the Moon at Project Gutenberg

Notes

1. ^ National Statistics Census 2001
2. ^ Notitia Dignitatum Occidentis, XXVIII, ed. A. W. Byvanck, Excerpta Romana. De bronnen der romeinsch geschiedenis van Nederland, t. I, La Haye, 1931, p571.
3. ^ Glover, J., The Place Names of Kent, Batsford, 1976, "Stutfall Castle". Cf. Ekwall, E., The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names (4th edition), Oxford University Press, 1960, "stod" (p. 444).