BELMONT HOUSE

LYME REGIS

THIS dusky pink, foursquare Georgian summer retreat is set high above Lyme Regis.

Former home to world famous author John Fowles, it has been restored by its new owner The Landmark Trust.

John Fowles finalised the proofs for The French Lieutenant’s Woman here, in a writing room

A century before Fowles the owner of this 18th-century maritime villa was Richard Bangay, a Victorian socialist and popular local GP, who was a passionate astronomer and built himself a three-storey observatory in the garden. It’s still there: restored, repainted.

Before Dr Bangay owned Belmont House there was Eleanor Coade, a single woman and 18th-century entrepreneur who ran a factory in Lambeth, South London.

Belmont is Listed Grade II and has now been restored so you can sit – and indeed write – in John Fowles’s former writing room with its wide views of sea and sky.

In the garden there is a Victorian observatory tower, with hatch and revolving roof. Most of the long garden is left wild (Fowles was a keen naturalist) and it tumbles down to the esplanade, with a pebble beach and the Cobb beyond.

See landmarktrust.org.uk/belmont for more information.