The Three Cups...

...today. on our armchair travels, we sat and contemplated The Three Cups Hotel in Lyme Regis, sat empty, for the last twenty of its two hundred and fifty years on Broad Street, the main road through town.

It started life as as Hiscott's Lodging and Boarding House; some say, the favoured lodgings of Jane Austen. The original building got itself a new Georgian facade and a new name then continued to host guests to the town including G.K. Chesterton, Alfred Lord Tennyson, H.W. Longfellow, Hilaire Beloc and JRR Tolkien before being used as an American officers mess, complete with briefings by Eisenhower, during the war, then, for a swan song, it was used as the setting for part of the filming of The French Lieutenants Woman.

Those walls that once oozed with a tangible sense of history now ooze with damp, algae and pigeon shite! After several years of complaint; the facade was finally painted so the building doesn't look such an eyesore from the front but over the past twenty years it's had it's moments. There have been gas leaks, trouble with the fabric of the building and now part of it may have to be demolished!

The light area at the bottom of the building is a mound of guano! As I was contemplating the best angle for a shot; I got plastered! If you can view this large, just look at the state of my hat!

Re-development plans are finally being discussed on a serious level and if things come to fruition I will return with a much smarter armchair and have another look.

For those of you that have managed to read this far....well done, and thanks for your time....