'Bournemouth' is a large
town and
tourist resort, situated on the south
coast of
England. With a population of 164,000 it is the largest settlement in the ceremonial county of
Dorset, though in the
historic county of
Hampshire. The town is a regional centre of education and business, and forms the main part of the
South East Dorset conurbation, with the adjoining town of
Poole. It is also the largest town on the English south coast between
Southampton and
Plymouth. The town is most notable as the home of the
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra,
The Arts Institute at Bournemouth as well as
Bournemouth University and the
Bournemouth International Centre. The town is also home to several financial companies including
JPMorgan Chase, the
Nationwide Building Society,
Liverpool Victoria and
Standard Life.
In a recent survey by First Direct Bank, Bournemouth was found to be the happiest place in Britain with 82% of people questioned saying they were happy with their life.
[2]
Geography
Bournemouth is located about 105
miles southwest of
London at . A roundabout at the end of the
Wessex Way called "County Gates" (but commonly known as Frizzell roundabout after the insurance brokers based there, now part of
Liverpool Victoria friendly society) marks the historic border between
Hampshire and
Dorset, and also marks the border between Bournemouth and Poole.
Historically Bournemouth was part of Hampshire, with Poole just to the west of the border between the two counties. At the time of the
1974 local government re-organisation, it was considered desirable that the whole of the
Poole/Bournemouth urban area should be part of the same county. Bournemouth therefore became part of the
non-metropolitan county of Dorset on
1 April 1974. On
April 1 1997,
Bournemouth became a
unitary authority, independent from the county council. For the purposes of
the Lieutenancy it remains part of the
ceremonial county of Dorset.
The urban geography of Bournemouth is complex as the town merges with several other towns to form the
South East Dorset conurbation which has a combined population of 383,713,
the whole area being sufficiently populous to be one of the major retail and commercial centres in the south of England. As such the town adjoins
Poole in the west and
Christchurch in the east. To the north west of Bournemouth is the small town of
Wimborne and to the north east is the settlement of
Ferndown.
Bournemouth International Airport lies to the north east of the town centre, towards
Hurn. The town is intersected by the
A338 dual carriageway, known as the "Wessex Way".
Although Bournemouth lies adjacent to the sea, the centre of the town lies inland - the commercial and civil heart of the town being "
The Square". From the Square the gardens descend down to the seafront and the pier. Areas within Bournemouth itself include
Bear Cross,
Boscombe,
Kinson,
Pokesdown and
Westbourne. Traditionally a large retirement town, Bournemouth (mostly the Northbourne, Southbourne and Tuckton areas of Bournemouth together with the Wallisdown, and Talbot Village areas of Poole) have seen massive growth in recent years, especially through the growth of students attending
Bournemouth University (the administrative area and main campus of which is in fact located in Poole).
Bournemouth Town Hall
Bournemouth is located directly to the east of the "Jurassic Coast", a 95 mile section of beautiful and largely unspoilt coastline recently designated a
World Heritage Site. Apart from the beauty of much of the coastline, the Jurassic Coast provides a complete geological record of the
Jurassic period and a rich
fossil record[3]. Bournemouth itself overlooks
Poole Bay and the
Isle of Wight, which is visible from some vantage points. Bournemouth also has approximately 7 miles of sandy
beaches that run from Christchurch in the east to
Sandbanks in the west. The stretch of beach along Poole Bay does not all belong to Bournemouth however, since its western part is in
Poole.
Because of the coastal processes that operate in Poole Bay, the area is often used for
surfing. An
artificial reef (Europe's first) is expected to be installed at
Boscombe, in Bournemouth, during the winter of 2007 using large sand-filled
geotextile bags. The reef is being constructed as part of the larger Boscombe Spa Village development.
[4] Bournemouth also has several
chines (e.g. Alum Chine) that lead down to the beaches and form a very attractive feature of the area. The beaches are themselves subdivided by
groynes.
Literature references
Bournemouth is in Hardy country, and appears as Sandbourne in
Thomas Hardy's novels.
Tess lived in Sandbourne with Alec d'Urberville, and the town also features in The Well-Beloved and
Jude the Obscure. Bournemouth is also mentioned in
So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish, the fourth book of the inaccurately named
Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, in which a large robot comes to earth and spends a week lying on the beach in Bournemouth face down. In
James Herbert's horror novel The Fog, the entire population of Bournemouth runs into the sea and drowns in a mass
suicide. It is also mentioned in Roald Dahl's The Witches, where the hotel is located.
Apparently
J. R. R. Tolkien spent 30 years taking holidays in Bournemouth, staying in the same room at the Hotel Miramar, with a second room to write in. He retired to nearby Poole.
Mary Shelley is buried in St Peters Church, her son Sir Percy having settled at
Boscombe Manor.
Climate and tourism
Bournemouth is also in an area of
England with a mild
climate and a section of the coast that enjoys some of the warmest, driest and sunniest weather in
Britain, especially in the summer. Because of this and the town's proximity to the
New Forest,
Jurassic Coast,
Devon and the Dorset and Hampshire
countryside, Bournemouth is a historically popular
tourist destination.
History
Main articles: History of Bournemouth
Bournemouth Beach
The area surrounding Bournemouth has been the site of human settlement for thousands of years. In
1800 the area was largely a remote and barren heathland. No-one lived at Bourne Mouth and the only regular visitors were a few fishermen, turf cutters and gangs of smugglers who landed their cargoes of spirits, tea and tobacco on the deserted beach.
The area had once been a hunting estate, 'Stourfield Chase', but by the late
18th century only a few small parts of it were maintained, including several fields around the Bourne Stream and a cottage known as Decoy Pond House, which stood near where The Square is today.
Generally, until
1802 the area was common land. The
Christchurch Inclosures Act 1802 and the Inclosure Commissioners' Award of 1805 transferred hundreds of acres into private ownership for the first time.
In
1809, the Tapps Arms public house appeared on the heath. In 1812 the first residents, retired army officer
Lewis Tregonwell and his wife, moved into their new home, built on land he had purchased from
Sir George Ivison Tapps.
First Tregonwell and later Tapps began developing the settlement for holiday letting. They planted pine trees, providing a sheltered walk to the beach. The town would ultimately grow up around its scattered pines. Twenty-five years after the Tregonwells started work on their holiday mansion, Bournemouth was still a small community with a scattering of houses and cottages.
In
1835, after the death of Sir George Ivison Tapps, his son Sir
George William Tapps-Gervis inherited his father's estate and started developing the seaside village into a resort similar to those that had already grown up along the south coast such as
Weymouth and
Brighton.
In
1841, there were still only a few hundred people living in Bournemouth, but that year saw the town visited by the physician
Augustus Bozzi Granville. Granvilla was the author of ''The Spas of England'', which described health resorts around the country. As a result of his visit, Dr Granville included a chapter on Bournemouth in the second edition of his book. It was this more than anything that put the town on the map as the perfect place for people with health problems, especially chest complaints, which were common in the 19th century. Bournemouth quickly became a destination for affluent holiday-makers and for invalids in search of 'the sea air'. In the 1840s the fields south of the road crossing (later The Square) were drained and laid out with shrubberies and walks.
In
1856, Parliament approved the Bournemouth Improvement Act. Under the Act, a board of 13 Commissioners was established to organise all the things involved in the running of a small but growing town, such as paving, sewers, drainage, street lighting and street cleaning.
By the 1860s the fields to the north were also laid out with walks by the owners of the
Branksome Estate. In the early 1870s all the fields were leased to the Bournemouth Commissioners by the freeholders. These fields now form The Pleasure Gardens, which run through the centre of the town. The area continued to develop along with the railways and the popular idea of visiting the seaside for holidays. Among the people who contributed to the development of Bournemouth at this time were Sir Percy Florence Shelley (son of
Percy Bysshe Shelley and
Mary Shelley) and Sir
Merton Russell-Cotes.
In 1880, the town had a population of 17,000 people. By 1900 this had risen to 60,000, and by 1990 it had more than doubled again, reaching 150,000. In the latest census, the town had a
population of 163,441. Since the 1990s there have been increasing calls for the town, together with Poole, to attain official city status (as per the example of
Brighton & Hove) due to its sheer expanse and regional importance.
Culture and recreation
Bournemouth Richmond Hill church
The town is an important venue for major conferences, with the
Bournemouth International Centre (BIC), which stands on the cliff-tops near the middle of the town overlooking the
sea and the
pier, often hosting the annual conferences of the main national political parties amongst its events. The BIC also hosts theatrical productions and concerts.
Bournemouth is also a major centre for the
teaching of English and has numerous English language schools. Many thousands of foreign students are attracted to the town every year, an important form of
invisible export. The town also has its own internationally recognised university -
Bournemouth University the main campus of which is actually in
Poole.
The
Russell-Cotes Museum is located just to the east of the Central Gardens near to the
Pavilion Theatre and next to the Royal Bath Hotel. The museum includes many fine mostly
19th century paintings and the family collections acquired when travelling e.g in
Japan and
Russia. It was Sir
Merton Russell Cotes, one of Bournemouth's most prominent
Victorians, who successfully campaigned to have a
promenade built; it runs continuously along the Bournemouth and Poole shoreline.
The
Royal Bath Hotel, located near the sea and just to the east of the Central Gardens, has attracted many important visitors over the years, including
Oscar Wilde,
H. G. Wells,
Richard Harris, Sir
Thomas Beecham,
Shirley Bassey, and prime ministers
Lord Beaconsfield (who stayed for three months to help his gout),
Gladstone,
Asquith and
Lloyd George. Royal guests have been
Edward VII and
Edward VIII when each was the Prince of Wales,
George VI when he was the Duke of York,
Queen Wilhemina of the Netherlands and
Empress Eugenie of France.
Gardens and Sport
Bournemouth award winning Central Gardens are a separate major
public park, leading for several miles down the valley of the
River Bourne through the centre of the town to the sea (reaching the sea at Bournemouth Pier) and include the Pleasure Gardens and the area surrounding the Pavillion and the IMAX cinema.
The town also plays host to professional football club,
AFC Bournemouth, currently playing in League One and to
Bournemouth F.C. who play in the Wessex League Premier Division. AFC Bournemouth play at the
Fitness First Stadium near
Boscombe in
Kings' Park, about two miles east of the town centre.
Bournemouth Gasworks Athletic F.C. were a non-league side much closer to the town centre, though lacked support and went bankrupt recently.
Bournemouth Cricket Club situated next to Bournemouth International Airport are one of Dorsets' Premier Cricket Clubs, Their 1st Team play in the Southern Premier League
Shopping
The main shopping streets in the centre of town are just behind the seafront on either side of the small Bourne river; indeed footpaths lead down to the sea (from The Square) through the lower section of Bournemouth Central Gardens.
The shopping streets are mostly pedestrianised and lined with a wide range of boutiques, stores, jewellers and accessory shops. There are major stores (
Beales,
Dingles,
Debenhams,
Marks and Spencer,
BHS), modern shopping malls, Victorian arcades (including the elegant Victorian arcade between Westover Road and Old Christchurch Road), and a large selection of bars, clubs and cafés. About a mile to the west of the town centre, in the district of
Westbourne, there is an impressive selection of designer clothes and interior design shops. About a mile to the east, in the district of
Boscombe, there is another major shopping area including many antiques shops and a street market. North of the centre there is a new out-of-town shopping complex called Castlepoint with supermarkets, DIY stores and larger versions of high street shops. Other supermarkets are located in town centre (
ASDA and
Co-Op), Boscombe (
Sainsbury's) and between Westbourne and Upper Parkstone.
Nightlife
Bournemouth, once referred to as "God's Waiting Room", has in recent years become a much younger, vibrant place. It has a large student population (including many exchange students) and many young people are drawn there by its extensive nightlife, including clubs opening 24 hours all day everyday. The town has many nightclubs and pubs, most of which have taken advantage of the recent change in licensing laws to stay open after the traditional pub closing time. Bournemouth applied for the most 24-hour licences of any town/city in the UK. However drinking alcohol in public, on the streets of Bournemouth is not allowed. One road in Bournemouth which has many clubs along it (including Toko, Bliss and Elements) is closed after 10pm stopping local traffic driving down it. Only taxis picking people up are permitted to drive down the road.Beware of two AAs who roam free in the town.
Bournemouth Air Festival
Bournemouth air festival was launched on the 10 August 2007 and will be a four day event at the end of the summer of 2008. The show will be centred on the Red Arrows with displays also from the Lancaster, Hurricane and Spitfire.
Education
The Bournemouth local education authority was first set up in 1903 and remained in existence until local government was
reorganised in 1974 when Bournemouth lost its County Borough status and became part of the county of Dorset. Under the
later reforms of 1997, Bournemouth became a
unitary authority and the Bournemouth local education authority was re-established.
Bournemouth is one of the minority of local authorities in England still to maintain
selective education, with two
grammar schools (one for boys, one for girls) and eight
secondary modern/
comprehensive schools.
There are also a small number of independent schools in the town, and a further education college.
The Arts Institute at Bournemouth, officially in Poole, is a small HEI (University) specialising in arts, design and media degree courses.
Bournemouth University has a presence in the borough, although its main campus is in neighbouring
Poole.
★ See
list of Bournemouth schools
Economy
This is a chart of trend of regional gross value added of Bournemouth and Poole at current basic prices
published (pp. 240-253) by ''Office for National Statistics'' with figures in millions of British Pounds Sterling.
| Year | Regional Gross Value Added'[1]' | Agriculture'[2]' | Industry'[3]' | Services'[4]' |
|---|
| 1995 | '2,740' | 4 | 665 | 2,071 |
| 2000 | '4,142' | 2 | 890 | 3,250 |
| 2003 | '4,705' | 2 | 898 | 3,804 |
# Components may not sum to totals due to rounding
# includes hunting and forestry
# includes energy and construction
# includes financial intermediation services indirectly measured
Many well-known global businesses were started in the Bournemouth area and many have later chosen to relocate their headquarters to Bournemouth because of the relatively low prices in comparison with London.
The following is a non-exhaustive list:
★
JPMorgan Chase - its European headquarters employs around 10,000 people
★
Portman Building Society
★
UISL, part of the
Unisys group of companies
★
Fitness First was started in Bournemouth and its headquarters are in the neighbouring town of
Poole
★
McCarthy & Stone
★
Liverpool Victoria formally Frizzell Insurance
★
Barclays Bank has a major IT centre in
Poole
★
Rias Insurance company has a major office in Bournemouth
★
Standard Life has a large office in Bournemouth
★
Lloyds TSB Insurance has its call centre in Bournemouth
Transport
With the growth of Bournemouth in recent years, traffic has increased dramatically. The conurbation of Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch shows increasing traffic congestion and the roads are often busy. Though attempts are being made to alleviate the congestion, the town is reliant on a few main roads in and out of the centre.
[5] The local councils have recently launched a local traffic information website.
[1] Local buses are provided by two rival companies,
Wilts and Dorset, the former
National Bus Company subsidiary, and
Transdev Yellow Buses, the former Bournemouth Council owned company.
There is no motorway within the county of Dorset, although there is dual carriageway - the
A338 "Wessex Way" - from Bournemouth town centre to the
A31 trunk road, which in turn connects to the
M27 at
Southampton. From here the
M3 leads to
London, and fast access may also be gained via the
A34 to the
M4 north of
Newbury, Berkshire.
National Express coaches serves Bournemouth Travel Interchange, Boscombe and Westbourne. There are frequent departures to London
Victoria Coach Station. There are direct services to the
West Country,
Sussex coast (
Brighton and
Eastbourne),
Bristol,
Birmingham and the
Midlands, the North West, and to
Edinburgh and
Glasgow. Flightlink serves
Heathrow Airport with connections to
Gatwick and
Stansted Airports.
Bournemouth is well served by the rail network with two stations in the town,
Bournemouth railway station and
Pokesdown railway station to the East. Parts of western Bournemouth can also be reached from
Branksome station. Bournemouth station is located some way from the town centre, due to the town's founding fathers not wishing to have a station within the town boundary, which extended 1 mile from the pier. However, this is not a major problem as the town has grown significantly since its founding and the railway station is now a major public transport hub for the area. The station was originally ¨Bournemouth East¨ with a second station serving the west of the town in Queens Road. (Poole station is by contrast near to Poole town centre).
South West Trains operates a comprehensive service to
London Waterloo with a journey time of as little as 1 hour 40 minutes. This line also serves
Southampton,
Winchester and
Basingstoke to the East, and Poole,
Wareham,
Dorchester and
Weymouth to the West.
Virgin Trains serve destinations to the North with direct trains to
Reading,
Oxford,
Birmingham,
Wolverhampton,
Manchester and the Northwest,
Yorkshire,
Newcastle, and Edinburgh and Glasgow.
South Central Trains 'West-Coastway' services are available by changing at Southampton Central. The Sussex Coastal towns of
Chichester,
Worthing,
Hove and Brighton are served and trains continue to Gatwick Airport and London Victoria.
Bournemouth International Airport is a short journey from the town centre - enabling passengers and freight to be flown directly to destinations in the UK and Europe. Taxis going to Bournemouth are available at the taxi stand on the airport and will bring you to town centre in approximately 10-15 minutes. A typical ride will cost anywhere between £10 and £15 pounds. Heathrow and Gatwick are accessible by car or coach.
Ryanair,
Easyjet,
Air Berlin,
Wizz Air and
Thomsonfly.com provide scheduled services to major destinations throughout the UK and Europe. Since 1993 Palmair have held their base at Bournemouth Airport as a charter airline offering charter flights to destinations on behalf of Bath Travel. The airport found fame in February 2006 when explorer
Steve Fossett landed here following his successful attempt to fly around the world in his plane "
Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer".
The nearby port at
Poole Harbour hosts
Brittany Ferries services to northern France and
Condor Ferries to the Channel Islands.
Wildlife
Bournemouth seen from Studland
The Bournemouth area has long been a place wherein many unusual species of animals and plants can be found.
Brownsea island, in nearby Poole Harbour, is one of the few places in the south where the
red squirrel still remains, and the
ant ''
Formica pratensis'' had its last stronghold in the area, although it is now thought to be extinct on the mainland. Although described by
Farren White as "the common wood ant of Bournemouth" in the mid-19th century, the noted
entomologist Horace Donisthorpe found only one colony of true ''pratensis'' out of hundreds of
''F. rufa'' nests there in
1906. In recent times the last known two colonies disappeared in the 1980s, making this ant the only ant species thought to have become extinct in Great Britain. It does, however, still survive on cliff-top locations in the Channel Islands. The rare
narrow-headed ant also used to exist in Bournemouth, although it has died out in the area.
Naming Conventions
The word 'Bournemouth' is often used (erroneously) to describe the
South East Dorset conurbation, which also contains neighbouring towns of
Poole,
Christchurch,
Wimborne Minster,
Verwood,
Ringwood and
New Milton. As a result, the following
misnomers have come to exist:
★ "Bournemouth University" is actually mainly in Poole.
★ "
Bournemouth International Airport" is actually near Hurn in the borough of Christchurch, and was originally named Hurn Airport.
★ "Bournemouth Bay" does not actually exist, but is a common misnomer for Poole Bay.
★ "
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra" recently moved to Poole.
References
1. Census 2001, Key Statistics for urban areas.
2. Bournemouth happiest town in UK
3. The Eocene Cliffs, with Leaf Bed, of Bournemouth, Dorset.
4. Boscombe Spa Village Surfing
5. Bournemouth's Roads, Travel, Transport & Parking
See also
★
List of Dorset beaches
★
List of Bournemouth schools
External links
★
Official Bournemouth Borough Council information site
★
Official Bournemouth tourist information site
★
Bournemouth history in photos
★
Bournemouth language schools
★
A nightguide for Bournemouth
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