more than just name.

For the two towns -- as well as the near 400-year-old common thread established through former Lyme Regis Mayor Sir George Somers who colonised Bermuda -- have a host of similarities in architecture and style.

Both towns command magnificent natural harbours and are closely linked with naval history.

And Lyme Regis' narrow, winding streets, bright pink, blue and green houses and steep streets rising from the seafront all have echoes of Bermuda.

And the town is even suffering some of the problems of its Bermudian sister -- two many cars and not enough parking spaces, for one.

Corporation of St. George's Mayor Henry Hayward said the towns were separated by more than 3000 miles of Atlantic -- but added time and distance had not eroded the similarities.

He said: "There is definitely a strong family resemblance between the two.

"I think when the original settlers began to build, they used a style that reminded them of home as much as possible.'' Former World Champion Town Crier, local historian and chairman of the Lyme Regis St. George's Twinning Association, Richard Fox, said he has noticed uncanny similarities between the two towns.

Mr. Fox said: "Bermuda's architecture is slightly different. It has white stone roofs while some of Lyme Regis' roofs are still thatched the way they would have been in Sir George's day.

"They are both on the coast and have fine natural harbours -- and both depend on tourism for much of their income.'' Mr. Fox added that he hoped the twinning ceremony would pave the way for even closer resemblances -- like a copy of the statue of Sir George Somers which stands in St. George's and ultimately a copy of the Deliverance, built in Bermuda after Sir George's Sea Venture was wrecked on a reef in 1609 while travelling from England to Virginia.

Even names in Lyme Regis have resonances of modern-day Bermuda -- the town boasts a Malibar House, a Tudor building built in the 1570s, although whether there is any link to the former Royal Navy base of HMS Malibar in Bermuda is unknown.

Lyme Regis -- known as the Pearl of Dorset -- also has a George's Square, although it is named after the old George Inn, burnt down in a disastrous fire which swept through the town in 1844.

The town has a Gosling Bridge, perhaps named after a relative of the Gosling liquor family of Bermuda.

And what is now the Tudor House Hotel -- which claims a post supporting a stairwell came from the Mayflower, the ship which took the Pilgrim Fathers to America in 1620 -- was owned by a prosperous family called Tucker for generations. The family were close friends of naval hero Sir Walter Raleigh, who lived near Lyme Regis and who regularly visited the town.

Mr. Fox said: "I would think that a lot of names in Bermuda originally came from here and many old names still survive in Lyme Regis.

"Dorset has always produced seamen and Sir George will have drawn many of his crew from his home town.

"There is even a Chard House in the area and there are Chards in Bermuda.

There are a lot of people called Fox as well, come to that. But as far as I know, no-one has ever done any research into this kind of thing, although perhaps they will in the future.'' The history of Lyme Regis stretches back into the mists of time. The town's recorded history began 1200 years ago with a reference to the lands along the River Lym being granted by the Saxon King Cynewulf to the monks of Sherbourne Abbey for the extraction of sea salt.

The Romans later built the first bridge over the Lym -- an Anglo-Saxon word which means torrent of water -- on the site of the current Horn Bridge.

The town was known as Lyme until Edward I granted a parcel of land to his second wife Queen Margaret as a wedding present.

That created the Manor of Lyme and the town was entitled to the suffix Regis, which it has used ever since despite the manor being confiscated in 1664 during the English Civil War T.

The three-mile-long Lym changes its name to the Buddle as it nears the sea, a buddle being an underground stream. The river runs under the town for much of the last 300 yards before it reaches the English Channel.

Not surprisingly for a town which produced Sir George Somers, Lyme Regis has provided seamen for British ships for generations.

Gun Cliff commemorates the cannon which protected the port against the Spanish Armada in 1588.

And the first shots in the naval battle which turned England into a superpower were fired in Lyme Bay.

The guns were last used in 1690 to repel a French invasion fleet and declared obsolete in 1725, although five are still on display around the town.

Like St. George's, Lyme Regis prides itself on its respectability, despite -- or perhaps because of -- its history of swashbuckling pirates, smugglers and wreckers.

And one episode from Lyme Regis' own Tucker family shows at least a spiritual link with the Bermudian clan, who were not above bending the rules to suit themselves.

The novelist Henry Fielding, most famous for the bawdy classic Tom Jones, visited the town in 1725 and fell under the spell of a ward of the Tucker family, Sarah Andrew, a 16-year-old orphan and heir to a fortune.

Fielding, 22, planned to abduct Sarah and lay in wait with saddled horse in a churchyard -- but the Tuckers got wind of the plot and beat the future legend of English letters to a pulp for his insolence.

A notice Fielding displayed on the town's Guildhall denouncing the Tuckers as clowns and cowards is preserved and on display in the Philpot Museum.

Other authors have also immortalised the town -- Jane Austen set much of her novel Persuasion in Lyme Regis. And the scene where the heroine's best friend plunges down a steep set of stairs in a seawall is believed to be inspired by the jagged stone steps at Cobb Harbour, Known as Grannie's Teeth.

And much of the Oscar-winning film, The French Lieutenant's Woman, from the book by Lyme resident John Fowles, was filmed in the Lyme Regis area, with the poster for film showing star Meryl Streep gazing out into a storm-lashed sea from the end of the town's Cobb.

The novelist Thomas Hardy -- author of literary classics like Jude the Obscure, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd -- also drew on the area for inspiration.

And perhaps England's most notorious judge -- Hanging Judge Jeffries -- gained his nicknamed during a series of trials in the Lyme Regis area which became known as the Bloody Assizes.

The reprisals followed the disastrous rebellion against the last Stuart king, James VII of Scotland and II of England, by the Duke of Monmouth, who landed his tiny and ill-equipped army to the west of the town on a stony beach still called Monmouth Beach.

The town's prosperity was based on sea trade, like St. George's, and it thrived on the export of wool to the continent for years, with more customs duty being collected in Tudor times than in ports like Liverpool.

But the trade declined as more wool was shipped from nearby Devon and Lyme Regis shrank in importance.

But with Bermudian-style opportunism, the town leaped into the tourist market after the Royal Family started a fashion for sea-bathing in the late 1700s.

Lyme Regis was an upmarket tourist destination as the English upper classes flocked to coastal towns to bathe.

And like modern-day Bermuda, the town faced a crisis as their traditional market began to collapse around the turn of the century.

The town fathers worried over the issue before taking the plunge and moving downmarket with the coming of the railways.

The railway was lost in a round of cuts in the 1960s, but the Pearl of Dorset kept its popularity.

And today the population of Lyme Regis -- a little over 3500 -- can treble during the summer influx of visitors from London and England's industrial heartlands in the Midlands.

Mr. Fox said: "We may not have the pink beaches of Bermuda, but we are, like St. George's, a piece of living history.

"We hope that between us we can foster links with tourism and other links which will be of benefit to both communities.'' HAND-OVER -- The Mayor of Lyme Regis Barbara Austin hands over a plaque of the town's Coat of Arms to Philip Troake, Bermuda's British Airways general manager, and Henry Hayward, the Mayor of St. George's.

ON PARADE -- Civic officials from Bermuda and Lyme Regis march along the sea-front for a flag-raising ceremony to mark the twinning of the town with St. George's.