The town faces Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, to which there is a car ferry service operated by Wightlink.

[1] The earliest settlement in the Lymington area was around the Iron Age hill fort known today as Buckland Rings.

[2] The Jutes arrived in the area from the Isle of Wight in the 6th century and founded a settlement called Limentun.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, Lymington possessed a military depot that included a number of foreign troops – mostly artillery but also several militia regiments.

At the time of the Napoleonic Wars, the King's German Artillery was based near Portchester Castle and sent sick soldiers to Lymington or Eling Hospital.

There are unproven stories of smugglers' tunnels running from the old inns and under the High Street to the town quay.

[9] The borough of Lymington was abolished on 1 April 1974 under the terms of the Local Government Act 1972, becoming an unparished area in the district of New Forest, with Charter Trustees.

In a Channel 5 programme, Lymington received the accolade of "best town on the coast" in the UK for living (ahead of Sandbanks), for scenery, transport links and low crime levels.

However, to avoid confusion with Buckland, Portsmouth, also in Hampshire, many people refer to themselves and their businesses here solely as Lymington.

[16] The high street has seen rapid change over the last few years, with an increasing presence of chain stores and coffee-shop franchises.

Local campaigns resulted in the rejection of proposals for the opening of branches of the Argos retail outlet, and in 2010 of the J D Wetherspoon pub chain.

Lymington, like the rest of the South of England, has a maritime climate of warm summers and mild winters.

The nearest official Met office weather station for which online records are available is Everton, about 2 miles (3.2 km) to the west of the town centre.

Thanks to its coastal position, sunshine levels are high relative to the rest of Britain, and severe frost unusual.

[19] date=November 2011 date=November 2011 The town's leisure amenities include several parks, a nine-hole golf course, a rowing club, a community centre, a library, St Barbe Museum and Art Gallery, two swimming pools (one the Lymington Open Air Sea Water Baths built in 1833), a sports centre, a small cinema/theatre, a Skatepark (for skateboards), several tennis courts, and some youth football pitches.

The proximity of the New Forest makes Lymington a popular base for walking, cycling and riding.

The strong tides make it a challenging race track, and together with the shallow depth of the river has resulted in Lymington losing several regattas to the Central Solent, principally run from Cowes.

It meets every Thursday evening for practice and most Saturday afternoons for tournament games in the Hampshire region, and friendlies around the South of England.

The A337 road links Lymington to Lyndhurst and the M27 motorway to the north, and to New Milton and the South East Dorset conurbation to the west.

[28] The 1980 Christmas special of the ITV children's show Worzel Gummidge was filmed in the town during the summer of that year.

During filming a sudden wind blew the titanium dioxide that was being used as a replica of snow into homes, shops and businesses, causing damage and a large compensation bill for the producers, Southern Television.