The Decline of Bournemouth
Written in 2020 and added to since.
Circling The Square: Bournemouth in the 1960s. The print that adorns my office wall.
I was born in Bournemouth. I went to school in Bournemouth. Now I live in Poole. It’s way nicer. Poole is now part of BCP (Bournemouth – Christchurch – Poole) the daft new name for the conurbation. Now we are also BCP ratepayers. They thought BCP would sound cool like NYC or LA or NOLA.
The question is – Bournemouth is in severe decline. Do Poole and Christchurch inhabitants want to revive it?
The last couple of times I’ve been in Bournemouth (apart from driving straight to the BH2 Odeon and parking, or to the BIC) I’ve resolved not to bother again. It has become run down incredibly quickly.
So …
The local paper (the Evening Echo) is full of Bournemouth’s travails. There are fifty empty retail units in the centre as of February 2020. Empty shops, boarded up cinemas, homeless in doorways, filth and litter, the huge Marks & Spencer is closed, and now Beales, the premier department store, looks like it’s going out of business.
Added: Evening Echo photo 15 February
Beales was rebuilt in the 1950s after being bombed in World War Two in 1943. It’s family history for me. My mum left South Wales in 1930, aged 15 to skivvy in Bournemouth hotels and send her meagre wages back to Tredegar. Her dream was to work in fashion in Beales, and she achieved that in the mid 1930s. After my dad died in 1966, she went back there and worked again in Ladies Fashions.
Irony … “Bournemouth a great place to shop” on the boarded up and closed Marks & Spencer store. NOT.
Reasons are cited for the decline, high rates, extortionate parking prices, pay machines that won’t take real money, tired old department stores, the large Castle Point shopping centre on the edge of town.
They say the High Street is in dire straits everywhere. We were in Newbury the other day. Disaster area. Monmouth too. Hull had a lot of closures, indicating that the European Culture City had limited impact, and then mainly in the old town.
However, the high street decline is not universal. Bath, Exeter, Norwich, York, Chichester, Winchester, Stratford Upon Avon are all thriving. All of them have a tourism boost, though less in Exeter, Winchester and Norwich than the other four. Bournemouth has a major tourism boost too, but perhaps the tourists head for the golden sands rather than the town centre.
Let’s go back to 1966. World Cup Year. I was not only born in Bournemouth, but my dad was too – few of my generation go back that far. The World Cup venues were rated on shopping attractions. London, Sheffield, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Sunderland and Middlesborough. The newspaper article suggested that these places were mainly very poor for shopping, and listed the Six Best Towns for shopping in the UK. Three were not World Cup venues … Newcastle, Bournemouth and Bristol. In my memory Bournemouth was ranked “Fourth best shopping centre in the UK.”
Department Store heaven: 10″ 78 rpm record from Bobby & Co (now Debenhams). 1937.
Was that ever true? I suspect not. The article was oriented to fashion shopping (though not I fear “youth fashion”), and in those days Bournemouth was “Department Store Central” … Beales, Bealesons (closed in 1982), Brights ( later Dingles, then House of Fraser since 2007), Bobbys (Debenhams now), Plummers (closed 1973), Bon Marche (closed decades ago, J.J. Allan (decades ago) and Maples (decades ago). J.J. Allen and Bealesons were converted into little semi-malls.
Plummer Rodis department store in the 1960s (all the building behind Dolcis)
In those days, department stores were still relevant. I know my sister and friends would make trips to Southampton which they considered better and cheaper. My third date with Karen was on a Saturday … going to Southampton because she said it was better for shopping. I also had doubts when I lived in Hull in 1966-1969. It also had huge department stores, and a brilliant food market with a far wider range than Bournemouth. I would score Hull as better at that time in everything EXCEPT fashion. Bournemouth also had the small boutiques. I thought Norwich (1969-1970) vastly better than Bournemouth, but I was probably counting book and record stores.
The only successful department store group nowadays seems to be John Lewis, and they have got rid of old stores in favour of new purpose built ones – see Kingston-on-Thames or Southampton where they moved from the High Street to West Quay. John Lewis Home (in Branksome) recognizes that the clothes business is best left to specialist stores nowadays and focuses on furniture, white goods, TV, computer, kitchen stuff and lighting. I can’t see them bothering with outdated existing buildings.
Department Stores, because they sell a wide range, inevitably leach off trade from potential specialist independent shops. The cookware shop failed in Gervis Place … but then there were three department stores selling cookware. Having said that, the department stores had all narrowed down to focus on clothes and cosmetics with a bit of linen and furniture. They all did luggage and bed linen at huge discounts during their frequent sales. i.e. half price is the normal price for suitcases and duvet covers. Does anyone buy them outside the sales?
I think back to Beales having a decent bookshop and a decent music department and large toy department. That was a long time ago. The clothes in the department stores tend to be concessions … stores within stores. There is no longer any sense of a specialist fashion buyer, and curated stock for the particular store in any of them. With House of Fraser that issue goes right up to Harrods in London. The concessions are failed high-street brands. Burtons as a store within a store? That was where we bought our cheap grey terylene school suits when it was a shop. It’s not a name to conjure with.
Bournemouth has gone a long way down since 1970.
My theory is that the rot started at least fifty years and it was a mix of inept local government officials, especially planners, coupled with a ‘dubious’ and partisan local council. Think back, in two of the safest Conservative parliamentary seats in the country, the Liberal Democrats have won control of local government: “no overall control” through the 1990s, Liberal Democrat 2003-2007. That’s how bad some of those Conservative councils were. The voters got fed up of councillors building monuments to themselves in social housing names and roads.
NO BIG DECISIONS
No big decisions were made about the town centre in Bournemouth when other councils were making major changes. When I lived in Norwich in 1969, it already had a partly pedestrianized centre. Then take Cheltenham. They created a mall from the back of major shops by roofing over the road behind and creating new shops on the other side. More recently the huge South Gate development in Bath with three floors of car parking below was a major boost to the entire city. Bournemouth did nothing.
In 1981, as free-lance authors, we had an office right in the centre of Bournemouth, in Post Office Road. We loved our BH1 1AA post code. Our tiny triangular first floor office suffered from the cooking smells emanating from the sandwich shop below, and the constant noise of the parrot from the dressmakers above, whose business of taking up hems and trouser legs necessitated a constant parade of shop assistants trudging noisily up the uncarpeted stairs.
Old Christchurch Road had just been pedestrianised (ten years too late). Trees were planted, only to be destroyed, every single one broken off at the base when Bournemouth played Leeds United in the FA Cup. Bastards. Then Woolworths had closed … they moved down to Woolco in what is now Castle Point. Boots shifted from Old Christchurch Road to Woolworths old store on The Square, and McDonalds opened in Boots old store. We were annoyed because we then had to walk 150 yards to W,H. Smith to buy our stationery instead of Boots (which then sold stationery, LPs and cassettes), and most of the way we were wading through McDonald’s litter.
The bus station, in Exeter Road in the late 1960s
There was a major gap in the town centre after the Bus Station (now the site of BH2 Odeon) burned down in 1976. The balance was never restored in the shape of the place, and buses moved up to the Triangle … interestingly favouring the Commercial Road side of town (roughly West) over the Old Christchurch Road side (roughly East).
The Square still had buses circling, effectively cutting the centre in two, which was Bournemouth’s perennial problem. At that point a plan was mooted. The idea was for a huge development replacing the entire Square. It would be partly underground with the Bourne stream running through the middle of a mall and gardens on top. It would create a covered mall linking the two sides with new shops on both sides. Shops like Debenhams and Boots could link into it. Rumour is rumour, but the story circulating among town centre business – and in a small way we were one of them then – was that the Beales family, which had members as councillors, had destroyed the plan. This was around 1982, and they had just closed the large Bealesons store in Commercial Road in June of that year, retreating to the main store in Old Christchurch Road. It’s ironical. Maybe they realized with the new proposed plan, their main store, Beales, would be on the far edge of the re-developed town centre, and that the new mall would be a conduit taking shoppers over to the other side … Commercial Road, which they had just left.
Maples, 2020 Still empty after all these years. Conversions of large old stores don’t work.
The result of being on the extreme edge of a shopping centre is illustrated by Maples in St. Peter’s Road. It was a premium major furniture store with a long curving frontage, built in 1937. It must be listed as an important piece of architecture. In 1993 the interior was damaged by an IRA bomb. It closed decades ago, but they never found a use for it. A few times shops tried to function on bits of the ground floor, but it’s mainly been blank windows for many years. It still is.
This was an era where other towns were building malls, redeveloping the centre. Bournemouth just didn’t. It’s never recovered.
What was supposed to be the super mall, Dalkeith Arcade, is now called Richmond Gardens, opening onto Old Christchurch Road. Fine if you like Wilko (going in 2023)and LIDL. It’s got the car park, and was originally a huge two floor Safeway supermarket. It didn’t work for a number of reasons. People just didn’t shop for food in the town centre (they don’t live there). In recent years, I know of two people who got mugged getting down from the car park.
At one-point Virgin proposed a megastore and cinemas on the old bus station site. That didn’t happen either … it would drag the focus onto the Square and away from Beales and House of Fraser. Of course, that’s exactly what the BH2 Odeon has done.
ALTERNATIVE CENTRES
Bournemouth is a little like London in having several shopping areas rather than a major focus on the centre. This may go back to its development as a seaside resort with train stations at Christchurch, Pokesdown (“For Southbourne On Sea”), Boscombe, Bournemouth Central, Bournemouth West, Branksome … all feeding different beach and hotel / guest house areas. Both Westbourne and Fisherman’s Walk are improving shopping and restaurant areas. Boscombe is … well, Boscombe, and has been run down for decades. Winton is busy, student dominated increasingly. The diversity of strong(ish) shopping centres takes away from the town centre. Kinson still has a number of shops. Other minor shopping areas, like Columbia Road and Southbourne Crossroads have given up. Shops have been converted into houses which look like ugly filled-in shops.
Christchurch is close, and apparently thriving. Small market towns with specialist shops are doing better generally.
Poole has problems, especially the awful bus station. I saw that Yellow Buses were pulling out of the bus station because of anti-social behaviour. As with central Bournemouth, Dorset Police seem singularly lacking at dealing with that issue. But Poole has the Dolphin centre mall which is busy, a (very mediocre) Sainsburys with large car park, and the far end of the High Street near the museum is a gem with specialist shops and restaurants. The bit of the High Street in between is its problem. Friends who come from Bournemouth, but live elsewhere, are astonished to find “Poole is much nicer than Bournemouth nowadays.” It is. When we were kids it was rough.
ONE RIGHT DECISION
Wessex Way: right through the middle
Bournemouth’s bold step was The Wessex Way cutting a swathe right through the middle. It took years to complete. It started in 1965-66, but the roundabout at Asda was mid 70s, as was the Richmond Hill underpass. It meant and still means that Central Bournemouth is easy to access. We argued about it back then; bits of Horseshoe Common were lost, St Paul’s Church was demolished (my grandad was verger), St Paul’s school was demolished. All the streets between Holdenhurst Road and Charminster Road were sliced in two (my dad was born in Capstone Road). We protested the loss of a clump of pines at the top of Richmond Hill when the underpass was created later. In the end, it was a very good move.
Brighton argued for decades and failed to do similar which made it a nightmare for traffic. When I worked at the Russell Cotes Museum in 1966, a bus from The Square up Old Christchurch Road to the Lansdowne in the evening rush hour took 25 to 30 minutes! I had the choice of walking up Bath Road to the Lansdowne to get my bus to Ensbury Park, or walking back down to The Square. The trouble was the buses never stopped at The Lansdowne because they were already full to bursting.
Recently there’s been press about Bournemouth being one of the four worst towns for traffic. Nonsense. Try leaving Oxford at 5 pm as I did for years. I regularly spent half an hour to cover a mile between the centre and the Ring Road. Brighton anytime. Try getting into Bristol in the morning, or out in the evening, especially from the south-west. We used to film our ELT videos in Bristol … good professional facilities and studio, buildings of any era you want. We stopped working there because moving a film crew and vehicles around Bristol even at midday took far too long. Parking was ridiculous. Side streets in Clifton are barely negotiable because of parked cars. Some TV companies then chose Bournemouth for ease of getting around.
Exeter is a nightmare because the one way system is so convoluted. Mostly, Bournemouth is remarkably good because of The Wessex Way. I also regularly drive Poole to Hengistbury Head in busy periods and take the coast road. It’s really easy. Bournemouth DOES have horrible traffic jams, but they are not cross town jams. The nightmare is getting from Wimborne to Bournemouth or Poole in the morning rush hour. I did it the other day … 70 minutes.
CASTLE POINT
That was originally The Hampshire Centre which opened in 1968, when Bournemouth was still in Hampshire. It centred around the then huge Woolco store. We bought our first TV there in 1972. It was demolished in 2001 and became Castle Point, with a flagship Marks and Spencer, and importantly a large Sainsburys, Asda and B&Q.
The definition of a UK High Street is said to be where you find W.H. Smith, Boots and Marks & Spencer. It has all three, and a large Superdrug. Bournemouth town centre fails on lack of Marks & Spencer.
Castle Point has a free car park. It’s easy to get to. Wessex Way gets you most of the way. It’s very hard for Bournemouth to compete because why pay £4 to park when you get the same stores or better versions with free parking?
FOOD STORES
Marks & Spencer closed. Back in the early 1970s, there was a Safeway and Habitat opposite, and a car park. I spoke to an M&S manager elsewhere who said he used to work in the Bournemouth store. He said they tried for years to get a parking refund deal with the Avenue Road car park opposite, but they wouldn’t co-operate (and the fixed normal prices were too high to make a refund feasible). So, he said, the Bournemouth store had the large food department but couldn’t sell food in quantity. The main sales were sandwiches (which they continue within W.H. Smith). So that whole area of their business didn’t work. Safeway failed in the Dalkeith Arcade site. LIDL is of limited appeal. OK, there’s a reasonable Tesco Express in Bourne Avenue to satisfy town centre workers, but you wouldn’t do a major shop there because you can’t park.
Compare Bath with a large Waitrose with parking in the centre, or Salisbury with a large Sainsburys right on the main car park and a large Waitrose just across the ring road.
You can’t combine shopping in Bournemouth with major grocery shopping. You can combine them at Castle Point, and in most other towns.
Bournemouth must be the largest town without a decent delicatessen. In the late 60s it had the incomparable Williamson & Treadgold in the arcade, plus later Brights (Dingles / House of Fraser) had a first rate Food Hall, as many department stores did in those days. Most of the market towns have greengrocers, fishmongers, butchers, health food shops, confectioners, bakeries. Tiny Swanage has a poultry and game butcher, a different beef butcher, a cheese shop. Not Bournemouth.
ENTERTAINMENT
Bournemouth Council failed to save The Palace Court Theatre. It got turned into a church without planning permission, and they just sat the council out until ten years passed and they no longer needed permission.
WRONG: The Palace Court Theatre in 2020: Harold Pinter was in rep here and stage manager. It used to have an entrance on Westover Road.
Next they replaced the Winter Gardens, which had such a good acoustic that the BBC kept a studio below the stage for recording the BSO (Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra). The BSO departed to a new home at Poole Arts Centre (now Poole Lighthouse). The replacement BIC (Bournemouth International Centre) had a 50% greater capacity than the Winter Gardens, and when Victoria Wood played there she looked at the decor, grimaced at the awful acoustics and announced it was the “first time I’ve played in a Tesco Loading Bay.” The acoustics have been greatly improved recently. However it’s designed for political party and trades union conferences. I know educational conferences have looked at it, and declined to book it because it has insufficient “break-out” rooms. Conference centres I’ve spoken in around the world have a large auditorium (2000 plus), at least two more 300 plus seater halls and at least a dozen rooms that can accommodate around sixty. That was how the BIC should have been designed.
The Winter Gardens ran great summer shows (I did limelights as a student), but the BIC was just too big for that.
Then they closed the Pier Theatre, which was the right size but a very cold and draughty walk in Winter … and a long walk from the car parks on a wet day.
There is no viable town centre theatre. The Pavilion is just too big … it’s fine for musicals and pantomimes and visiting music shows (and should be retained for them) but doesn’t work for the sort of 400-700 capacity theatre most touring productions are designed for. The Palace Court needs replacing. In 2018, Bournemouth Council announced plans for “Pavilion Gardens” with a theatre and art gallery. Let’s see.
RIGHT: The Tivoli Theatre, Wimborne. Ten miles away and exactly the kind of thing Bournemouth needs
The greater conurbation is well served by two highly successful community theatres, the Tivoli Theatre in Wimborne and the Regent Centre in Christchurch. I believe there’s room for one in Bournemouth too … the Grand Cinema (Bingo Hall) is closed up in Westbourne. But given the Tivoli and Regent as converted cinemas, I would say Bournemouth needs the sort of small modern arts centre that you find in towns like Yeovil and Basingstoke. Yes, we have Poole Lighthouse, but the area is populous enough to support another.
Westover Road 2020. Mainly shops TO LET. Doorways TOILET.
Westover Road? Once one of the premium shopping streets in Britain. Now it’s the worst example of empty shops and rough sleepers in doorways. In the late 60s it had two cinemas (then the ABC and Gaumont) plus the huge ice rink. They never managed to do anything with the ice rink site. Eventually Odeon owned both cinemas. They were old and converted into multiple screens. They suffered from severe sound leakage between screens. So Odeon moved across the gardens to the other side into the large BH2 Odeon complex with restaurants. BH2 Odeon made far more sense than modernising, but that has left Westover Road with three huge boarded up places … two cinemas and an ice rink.
The Gaumont (Odeon) frontage, Westover Road 2020. You can see why it’s a listed building. It should have a blue plaque. In 1963 The Beatles played here twice nightly for a whole week.
What can they do with them? The Gaumont has a listed frontage. Trouble is, it’s way more expensive to convert an old building than it is to rebuild with modern safety, heating, access and so on. Also, conversion is subject to VAT. New build isn’t (at least for domestic buildings).
Hinton Road: rear of Gaumont (left) and the Ice Rink (right)
A radical move? Retain the front wall of the Gaumont (OK, Odeon) as in London developments. You might even retain the back wall too … though on balance, nice as it is, it would be impractical. Demolish the rest of the building entirely. Build a brand new arts complex with theatre (perhaps 400 seats and modern … say like the Minerva in Chichester, semi in the round. Add a studio theatre with 150 seats, maybe a small arts cinema, a dance space?
Then I think that as in Winchester restaurants would be encouraged to open around it. A few good fashion stores survive … Alfa, Robert Old, Richmond Classics. It’s a basis to attract more.
The ABC in 2020 – frontage not worth keeping
You still have to sort out the ABC and Ice Rink. Again, demolition would be the answer.
You could put an indoor sport complex on the ice rink site, but again, new build not conversion.
BH2 Odeon – I suspect this has shifted the town centre forever
I like BH2 Odeon. It also signals a shift in what we define as the town centre. It happens. New development in Exeter Road with the Winter Gardens redevelopment would seal it.
My son went to university in Evanston, Illinois. We went several times … great town centre. Then we heard about “Main Street” a mile away, aka “the old Main Street”. Long abandoned as the shopping centre, and now with some interesting odd stores relying on dirt-cheap rentals. That might well happen to Westover Road unless action is taken soon.
HOMELESS, ROUGH SLEEPERS
Westover Road, 14 December 2019. One of Britain’s premier shopping experiences …
This is what gets readers most impassioned. It happens. Let’s not go into social shifts or central government politics. There are areas where rough sleepers concentrate. If you try filming in the streets, they flock to you … mainly “Give us a fiver or we’ll shout and scream while you’re filming.” When they filmed Minder in East London, they got over it by supplying a free soup kitchen, and banning anyone who disrupted filming for life. That’s not new. That’s 40 years ago. When we filmed in the streets in Bristol, the catering van always gave police officers coffee and food which meant we usually had police officers standing around fending off noisy vagabonds. In the USA, we “rented” an off-duty policeman. (Good morning. I’m your police officer for today. Would anyone like to see my gun?) We had a great one on Long Island. He stopped traffic while we filmed a scene. Someone tooted their horn and he threatened to arrest them (Can’t you see they’re filming here! … it wouldn’t work in the UK, but filming is a serious event in the USA and worthy of respect.)
We used to get major problems filming in Oxford, which had a lot of homeless people even 30 and 20 years ago. I was told it was a combination of places to sleep, generous tourists and “care in the community” … i.e. shoving mentally ill people out of hospitals onto the street, and Oxford had several mental hospitals in the area around it. Generally warmer Southern towns with plenty of places to sleep in the open attract more homeless people. There are more than there used to be ALTHOUGH in the 1960s there was a community of 20 to 50 rough sleepers / travellers / early hippies basically camped out “under the pier” in Bournemouth. I sold ice cream on the beach every weekend from age 15 to 18 and I know it.
In Bath, ten years ago the underground car park under the police station had an entire side devoted to rough sleepers … the police wisely thought it best to let them congregate in one place under a degree of supervision, and it was at least dry and sheltered.
It is shameful to us as a country. A couple of weeks ago on a Saturday, I noticed some were huddled in doorways blue with cold, looking awful. Yet a few looked remarkably well fed and warm as they set out their blankets and signs. Yes, some will be fake. We can divide homeless v beggars. It still doesn’t excuse ignoring it. Most are genuine. Some readers of the Echo suggest Draconian policing will solve it. Obviously the town centre is vastly under-policed. When I was sixteen I remember being stopped outside Bobbys (Debenhams) because a policeman overheard us saying “Fuck.” We were ticked off and threatened with a report to our school. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. Certainly, I was very angry to see burly down and outs (what the 19th century called “sturdy beggars”) aggressively panhandling for money in Bournemouth, and they focus on the young, especially girls, and the elderly, who are frightened into giving them money. That’s an offence. The police should deal with it, and they don’t. Hanging around next to cash machines is also intimidating.
But there should be a centralised solution, even if it’s only as far as Bath’s underground car park. Yes, I know, people will say it will only attract more of them.
HEN NIGHTS, STAG NIGHTS AND YOOF
Bournemouth on a Friday and Saturday night is full of drunken groups with balloons and group T-shirts going out for a drink, a bit of shouting and swearing and a good vomit. They can be intimidating. Some towns are Stag Night / Hen Night destinations. Bournemouth is a major one. Last year we saw a huge drunken stag night party wandering around peaceful and sedate Stratford-upon-Avon at 11 p.m. looking confused and perplexed their ‘GARY & TRACY” balloons trailing behind them. Stratford is NOT a good stag night destination.
People cite the night club / bar area from Horseshoe Common to the Lansdowne as another minus factor for Bournemouth. I’m not convinced it is. It is a limited and defined geographical area. Most large towns have a similar area. Having lads pissing in shop doorways and girls vomiting in the gutter in an area of a town is widespead. Exeter one Friday night was full of it and walking back to our hotel meant picking our way through puddles of urine and vomit.
Like Bournemouth, Norwich has one long street full of discos, clubs and bars. Not having been to Norwich for a few years, we made the mistake of staying at a hotel at the end of it, and walking through it at 11 pm after a concert. They had two Paramedic buses lined up in the street. Twenty police officers at least. Two burly security guards ID-ing people at Tesco Express … which sells alcohol. Like Bournemouth’s Old Christchurch Road, it’s a specialist yobbing about area.
IS IT THE SEASIDE? COMPARISONS …
The number of homeless / beggars is connected to location. In the summer a beach area attracts. A flow of tourists attracts … though Bath and Winchester both seem to police panhandling and hanging around by cash machines better than Bournemouth does. However, Hastings, Eastbourne and Weymouth are as bad or worse than Bournemouth. Hastings was much worse years ago – it’s a prime example of what we don’t want to happen. The South-East has a definite immigration angle to this. Otherwise, it might just be proximity to the sea.
Brighton is worse in some areas for begging and drunken yobs … it shares the Hen Party / Stag Night issue with Bournemouth. In contrast, it does have a decent covered mall, which Bournemouth doesn’t. It has the Lanes, a unique independent shopping area, and it has the Theatre Royal / Brighton Pavilion “cultural” area with restaurants.
The Lanes isn’t what it used to be. We were in Lewes, just up the road from Brighton and actually closer to the two universities than the town centre. Lewes has the antique shops and booksellers that used to grace The Lanes in Brighton. We spoke to a couple of shop owners. Both had started in The Lanes, but the combination of staggering rates, drunken carousing and beggars drove them out to Lewes.
We see the same pattern here where Christchurch, Wimborne and Ringwood all offer pleasant and varied shopping environments. Ringwood has improved dramatically. Small attractive towns seem to be resisting the downward spiral far better than large ones.
RATE AND RENTS
The other culprit, according to many readers is high rent and rates.
Rent first. A friend had a toy store twenty years ago (not here). After ten years, the bank, which owned the building, reviewed her rent and quadrupled it. Result? Out of business. It’s now a Costa. Yes, if you employ kids and sell 5p worth of coffee and hot water for £2.95, you can afford the rental. There are town centres where you have a Costa, Nero, Coffee One and a Starbucks within 100 yards. Madness.
Beales 3 February 2020. Closing down sale?
Rates. Beales paid £440,000 a year and wanted to negotiate a drop. That sum will be based on square feet. If they got a reduction, why wouldn’t House of Fraser and Debenhams deserve the same? Both were also teetering on the brink of liquidation in recent years. Look up at House of Fraser’s tiled walls. Small forests of weeds are growing out between them. (2022 – both ahve closed)
So Beales needed to make a profit on sales of £8,500 a week just in order to pay their rates. £1200 a day after heat, light, rent, staff just to cover rates. They’ve got SIX very large floors. £200 a floor. If shops don’t pay business rates, then householders will have to pay more. Much more. If they can’t run such a large area of shop space well enough to generate the money, then they’re finished. Much of it is effectively sub-let anyway. Department Stores are intrinsically an outdated model. Bournemouth suffers most of all because it had more per capita than other towns for many years.
On the other hand, a solution would be to create a small independent shop area. Old Christchurch Road pedestrian section looks the place. It had a record store, The Vault (now gone), and it needs more similar businesses. An independent bookshop? A delicatessen? Craft shops? A specialist food shop section? The example should be Frome. The steep cobbled Catherine Hill was run down. So they gave new businesses a two year “rates holiday” to get started. Now it’s thriving … artisan shops, antiques, fashion, vinyl, haberdashery and they are virtually all one-off shops. Owner run. That’s a model to emulate (and Westover Road might need it to prompt revival).
I just drove through Ashley Road in Upper Parkstone, hardly a major shopping district but it has butchers, a specialist tea merchant, Polish delis, a South African deli, an excellent Asian greengrocer, a bookshop, a collectors’ record shop, bakeries, children’s clothes specialist, party shop, a Waitrose, a large Co-op. The huge factor would be the different level of rates and rent.
Go for independents in Bournemouth. Do not allow building societies, accountants, lawyers or estate agents in shops with display windows! They kill shopping streets. Only allow shops or cafés with front windows with actual stuff to sell or eat. Have a section with a range of food stores, possibly built into a defunct department store. We have a good Waterstones, but it’s small compared to Bath. It’s the only book shop. Tiny Bridport has a Waterstones and THREE Antiquarian book stores.
Old Christchurch Road – encourage independent shops. Too many TO LET signs now
Bournemouth, unusually, has not allowed charity shops in the town centre (a blight everywhere else). I think they’re right. Chichester has a side street full of them.
MARKETS & SPECIAL EVENTS
Events attract people. According to the web, Bournemouth has 500 events a year. Hmm.
The French Market weekend was a good idea, though Tesco in Branksome complained on the Sunday that they had no baguettes or croissants to sell because the French stallholders had bought the lot to sell at triple Tesco’s price in the market. That sort of market works because it’s just a day or two. Frome has a Sunday one, once a month.
One of the earlier Christmas markets
The Christmas Market? On balance it’s negative for me. The town stinks of hot dogs and mulled wine. If you are a retailer paying rates 52 weeks a year, it is infuriating to find on the busiest weeks of the year, cheap stalls are taking your food and drink trade, or your Christmas gift trade. One shop owner told us that she paid rates, only to find she couldn’t sell shawls or pashminas in December because a temporary wooden stall took all the business. Also double glazing and magnetic bracelets are not what you see in German Christmas markets. Winchester’s market by the cathedral, away from the main shops with an ice rink for children seems positive. Bournemouth’s adult boozing one doesn’t.
Other towns have festivals … the Brighton Festival is major, Norwich has similar, and then there’s the Cheltenham Literary Festival, the Oxford Literary Festival, Salisbury has an Arts Festival and so on. Bournemouth has tried literature and arts and the results are feeble. Wrong people organizing them?Probably. Newspapers support Cheltenham and Oxford. Bournemouth’s big one is the Air Festival which attracts huge crowds, but they are attracted first to the cliffs and beaches rather than the centre.
Some sort of event week or two in Spring would be good. It has to be on a much more vigorous highly-publicized large scale than past ventures..
ROADWORKS & THE A338
To me, a major culprit, the nail in the coffin for Bournemouth as a shopping centre, was the A338 roadworks. They started with ludicrous “save the reptile” works and fencing. Absurd. There were several hundred yards of heathland or more stretching back on either side. To rational people, the adders and lizards would simply shift themselves 50 yards away from the road as the work started. No, no. They had to have habitat protection. (And to be honest, St Patrick rid Ireland of poisonous snakes. So why are we worried about saving the odd adder which decides to slither onto a highway? Though as snakes fear vibration, they probably wouldn’t).
Then the works didn’t have the third lane in spite of huge expense. They then cleared the gorse bushes at the sides that had caught cars sliding off the road, to leave a deep ditch where they could turn over instead.
The A338 in 2018, Evening Echo photo
They did not solve the problem of clodhopper Dorset Police refusing to divert cars when the road is blocked by accidents either. There are two kinds of Sat Nav, one uses cameras on fixed points, the other uses data fed back from commercial vehicles. Mine never tells me when the A338 is blocked. Everyone I know realised the solution to these two hour A338 traffic standstills after an accident. All you need is a couple of access points to Matcham’s Lane, closed off with metal barriers, which can be opened by the police only when there is an accident blocking the A338 road.
Example: A few years ago we were heading north on the A338 towards Southampton. There was a minor shunt … no ambulances … where the road from Christchurch comes onto the A338 going South. The police had closed the road totally. The traffic jam stretched beyond Ringwood. Two hours plus for those coming in. Then we got to Southampton. There was an accident on the M271 going in with two ambulances attending … BUT the police had kept one lane open and we moved slowly through. When I was a boy, Bournemouth was in Hampshire. Apparently, Hampshire police are more intelligent than Dorset Police.
The main thing is that for months, years, you could get stuck in the A338 roadworks for 45 minutes trying to get to Bournemouth. Me? Several times. Then at quiet times of day, it was still 20 to 25 minutes. We spoke to people in Ringwood and Fordingbridge – they started shopping in Salisbury or Southampton instead rather than face the hold ups. Bournemouth lost business massively because of the roadworks, causing some shops to slip below the viability line. Ringwood has become WAY better for shopping as a result. It has a Waterstones, an Aga shop, a toy shop, several fashion shops (Hobbs, Joules, Fat Face, Phase 8), some individual like Woodsies and Calm Amongst The Chaos rather than just more chain stores. Wimborne meets both my criteria … independent bookshop and record shop.
Salisbury? Well, Putin’s assassins have badly affected the town with the Novichok attack, and it’s not yet fully recovered.
Those ill-planned and inadequate road works screwed Bournemouth totally for shopping at a crucial point.
BIKE LANES
Richmond Hill: the steepness of the hill, the width of the bike lane, plus it has a kerb – it’s not flat with the road
The council planners are would-be social engineers and cyclists. Many years ago, Keith Waterhouse wrote that the purpose of a town council was to keep the street lights lit, the municipal baths disinfected, the sewage flowing, the dustbins emptied and the libraries stocked with books and that was it. No social engineering.
Bike lanes and building bike lanes have disrupted traffic. In that long, long haul in from Wimborne recently (where I had to be at 8 a.m.) I travelled the length of Alder Road between 8.30 and 9.05 am. So it took 35 minutes. Installing the bike lane there caused massive disruption. In THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES in the rush hour I saw only one bike. Anyone could tell them, if you’re a normal cyclist rather than a major competitive sports cyclist, you will avoid Alder Hills. They are too steep.
Similarly, the bike lane with its kerbstone at the side on Richmond Hill benefits only the most vigorous sports cyclist and coincidentally (NOT) leads mainly to and from the Town Hall where I’m told we ratepayers provide hot showers for the cyclists after their sweaty commute. Hang on, the carbon footprint of a car is replaced by the carbon footprint of a hot shower …
A normal cyclist will get off and walk. Richmond Hill is so steep that only electric trolley buses were allowed up in the 1960s. When the first petrol buses were allowed up, I was on one that slid slowy backwards all the way down on a wet road, horn blaring … too many people were standing. My Vespa scooter in the 60s could only just do it. Yes, I realize that gears on modern bikes far surpass my trusty Sturmey-Archer 3 speed, but even so … it’s a very arduous climb. Incidentally, a designer friend enthuses about Richmond Hill – virtually no two buildings are from the same decade.
Many of the bike lanes are for lycra-clad sports cyclists, not a hypothetical family with kids or cheerful cloth-capped workers on their pushbikes (basket for lunch box on the front) on their way to the factory. They are a waste of public money, engineered by an elite group of local government officials with a mission. Cyclists are a vociferous and successful pressure group, and have every right to try, but you have to cost cycle lanes and the likely number of users. It would seem sensible to link the Lansdowne and Talbot Village university campuses for example, not that I see many students cycling.
Wallisdown Road, Whitelegg Way, Ferndown. These bike lanes all caused months of disruption. Wallisdown Road has duel carriageway bike lanes either side. The sports cyclists want to be able to overtake a hypothetical normal cyclist at speed. I walked the length recently. Three bikes in thirty minutes. One electric, one on the pavement not on the bike lane. It cost millions. Who voted for it? Who decided that millions should be spent on a social engineering project for tiny but vociferous minority? Why does Bournemouth have a crumbling town centre, many homeless but empty dual carriageway bike lanes? I had to wait for a taxi after dropping my car for repair in Ferndown. I waited forty minutes, 8 am to 8.40 rush hour by the bike lanes. I saw ONE bike and that was being pushed by an elderly man. Do cyclists bring business into the town centre? A resounding no. In 2023 they held a rally in July to DEMAND more bike lanes. DEMAND is what it said on the posters.
I’ve lived and worked in different places. London, Oxford, Cambridge and Hull have hundreds of cyclists. They’re flat. Bournemouth never had many cyclists even in the poorer 60s. It’s too hilly particularly around the town centre. If you want to cycle fast for sport, go to a Velodrome. Public money should not be subsidising your hobby. It’s also a hobby for a narrow age group. Kids can’t cycle far on today’s roads. Older people can’t manage the hills.
(Incidentally, Bristol plans to ban all diesel cars 7 am to 3 pm. Bath plans a £9 diesel congestion charge. If the charge area in Bath includes the South Gate car park … literally yards from the ring road … they will be truly shooting themselves in the foot for retail. Bournemouth beware.)
DEVELOPMENT
Halls of Residence, The Lansdowne
And more …
It’s all university, much of which is semi-language school or rather directed at foreign students paying three times UK fees. Massive developments mean the stretch of Holdenhurst Road from Asda to The Lansdowne is where anyone sensible in business would open a shop. It will be pedestianized. It will end up as an alternative new town centre.
Holdenhurst Road, 3 February 2020. The future centre?
The new accommodation is all student. Think what that amount of building would do for social housing. Couldn’t one large hostel for the homeless find space among all that development?
ADDENDUM 2022
So House of Fraser (aka Dingles, Brights) is now gone. They’ve done well converting Debenhams back into Bobbys, but you can’t do that three times. The notable thing about Ringwood, Wimborne, Bath, Salisbury is a large central Waitrose store … Ringwood and Salisbury also have a large central Sainsburys. You need a major food store with good parking.
John Lewis (with Waitrose below) is a major feature in Kingston-upon-Thames, but John Lewis have closed old, inefficient department stores and go only for new build. They also only build where they have a massive car park attached. So John Lewis are not going to try Central Bournemouth. The trouble with Brights (sorry, House of Fraser) is that it’s an iconic building, otherwise the radical solution would be to demolish Beales, the arcade (also an iconic building) and House of Fraser and build a bold new mall- Exeter has one, Reading has one, Bath has the outdoor Southgate area. Bournemouth never made that step. It would be terrible to do it there plus there’s no car parking solution. Car parking is vital – see Bath Southgate with its three underground levels.
Think of the Cheltenham solution. They took out the road behind existing shops and turned it into a mall, with the existing shops having access from their rear (or turning their rear into an equal front) along one side and new stores along the other. The bold plan, given the two empty cinemas and ice rink bridging Westover Road and Hinton Road, might be Hinton Road. Then you could have some sort of escalator access to the Upper Hinton Road car park, which in turn could become a multi storey.
ADDED February 28th 2023
“Bournemouth a great place to shop.” This is on the boarded up Marks & Spencers, not on the two large boarded up department stores or the two boarded up cinemas or the many boarded up shops. We were there today. Horrible. It’s a vile place to shop. On the steep hill leading down from here we saw three cyclists in five or six minutes riding flat out down the hill, weaving past toddlers and old people. I called out ‘Slow down! It’s a pedestrian area’ and got appreciative nods, smiles and ‘quite right’ from passers by. Though I got ‘F*** you, you old C***’ from the cyclist. Then in HMV Record store there was a woman with two dogs who were growling and snapping at anyone they got near, and barking in between. People never took dogs into shops. Now they’re in every shop and restaurant. If they’re well-behaved you don’t notice, but the number of dogs has increased rapidly in the last decade, mainly it seems to people who have no idea how to train or control them. That’s my old man’s curmudgeonly rant for the day.
2024: The Ivy and Bournemouth
The news was that The Ivy Restaurant had decided not to proceed with a planned restaurant at the foot of Richmond Hill:
From The Evening Echo January 2024.
One source has told the Echo that the directors of the Ivy stayed at a hotel in Bournemouth, took one look around the town and decided it “did not align to their brand”. They added: “They were shocked at the goings on outside Tesco and the absence of any police response.”
I think that’s a nail in the coffin. We eat at the Ivy restaurants often. They chose the best locations when they expanded rapidly from their original Covent Garden base … Tower Bridge in London, East Street in Chichester, the High Street in Winchester, St Helen’s Square in York, Milsom Street in Bath, Montpelier Street in Cheltenham. They are all in nice places, and often in historic buildings (Cheltenham is the finest of the lot). They have a great formula. Smart and polite service, beautiful rooms, good cutlery and glasses and cloth napkins, and yet the price is the same or a little more than the pub lunch or hotel restaurant, and the food is better. We wondered about the foot of Richmond Hill when we first heard. I said, ‘Exeter Road between The BIC and BH2 would be better.’
I can’t see the fit with the vile Christmas Market pop-up pub right outside wafting the smell of hot dogs through the doors (it’s top left, directly next to the proposed Ivy site). The Square is no longer a pleasant location. No, Bournemouth is just ‘not nice enough.’.
On leaving school in 1960 with no qualifications I started working at Beales in the menswear department, then went across the road to J J Allen to work in their carpet department where because my father had been a carpet buyer at Bealesons I was immediately at home with the products. By the way just around the corner was Hugh MacKay’s of Durham carpet trade showroom.
As the junior I was lumbered with selling Numdah rugs (stitched) to the many elderly customers with modest budgets before being allowed to sell Axminsters, Wiltons & being introduced to the complexity of oriental rugs & huge heavy washed Chinese carpets & rugs, of which a large varied stock was always held. Everybody knew however that the most popular Persian designs were called Elephants Foot..
I learnt how to differentiate between Gripper & Spool Axminster carpet such information of no consequence to customers so I was probably in danger of showing-off my knowledge. More cumbersome & inherently dangerous was learning to manhandle heavy rolls of linoleum & the new-fangled vinyl.
It was the 1960’s & there were new developments such as wide carpets promoted as Broadloom & customers would come in & ask to be shown some ‘Broadloom carpet’ not realising it was not a brand or a quality, thus it had to be politely explained that it was just carpet woven on a wide loom – the clue being ‘broad loom’! – this at a time when most carpet was only available in rolls of mainly 27” & 36” width.
With ‘close cover’ fitting i.e. right up to a rooms & walls leaving no gap, the carpet edges were turned under then tacked. ‘Turn & tack’ was eventually seen as the budget option, the indents also caused by the tacks were a dust trap, all to be replaced by the Gripperod system, a brand name but I’ve forgotten what the non-brand term was for the ply strips inset with sharp nails. Felt underlay that became compressed over the years was fast being replaced by rubber.
A further development was ‘twisted pile’ plain carpet which minimised or even completely eradicated the problem of ’shading’ which customers thought was a fault. It was of course where plain pile had become crushed & caught the light. Until recently had left-overs ( in a Coral colour) laid in my garage for a classic car to stand on!
Despite having a premium image J J Allen kept some sample books of the new ‘tufted carpet’, carpet yarn ’stuck’ into a rubber backing. It was horrible cheap stuff that had been championed by a company called Cyril Lord who had a showroom at the Lansdowne. The came printed carpet………..
It was at J J Allen I was let loose displaying carpet, set pieces within the department & in isolated locations around the store.
As I kept up-to-date reading Carpet Review, observed how other department stores ran their carpet departments & committed many designs to memory I became ‘to-go’ to guy when a customer came in with a carpet sample asking for it to be identified. Without realising it & whilst the term had yet to be invented I became quite the carpet ‘anorak’. So much so that whenever I found myself sitting in a chair or sofa in a carpeted room, whether in a relations or friends house I would drop an arm & run my fingers through the pile in order to determine its quality – the density of pile as opposed to the less relevant length. Sad to admit I do the same today.
One day the buyer (name forgotten) allowed me to accompany him of a buying trip to a trade show in London – by train. Better still on one of the stands he asked me to choose a roll of 27” body for stock which I did. It was a pink ground floral & despite numerous attempts to display it as artfully as possible it never sold a yard! Not that I was too down-hearted because the buyer later purchased a number of very large white & pink modern rugs designed by David Hicks. Given that J J Allens core customers were probably +60, & traditionalists to the core the attempt to bring the store & department up-to-date failed & like my purchase I never saw any of the rugs sold.
Whilst forgetting most names in this narrative such as the kindly buyer some at J J Allen I do recall most because they could have been the inspiration for ‘Are You being Served?’.
The under or assistant buyer was a Canadian Mr Reddish who enjoyed a rather nice windowed office whom I vaguely recall having the occasional conversation with. He was ambitious & left during my tenure.
There was an elderly salesman Mr Edwards (Christian names were never used in those days) who sat behind a huge oak desk in the middle of the department. He had been employed just after the war & thus knew not only all there was to know about carpets but also nearly every customer that walked into the department. In fact his desk drawers contained notebooks going back years recording the details of every special order sale he had ever made. He had a very unfortunate mannerism, the frequent twisting of his head back & forth accompanied by a cough & a thumb brought up to his mouth all in one sequence. This would be repeated frequently all day. I learnt later that he’d been on the poop deck of a minesweeper when a mine blew up killing several sailors. He was also careful with his money & instead of visiting the staff canteen or going out to lunch he’d sit in the loo & eat a bar of Cadburys chocolate.
By contrast was ‘young’ Mr Bannister who teased Mr Edwards endlessly but in a caring way – I think deep down he respected him. ‘Young’ Bannister rated himself with the young female staff & somehow he always got to serve the more attractive female customers.
A tall slightly overweight jolly salesman was Mr Parsons ( he DID like to be called by his Christian name Tim) who had a way with older female customers who he charmed as if they were teenagers, thus they always made a bee line for him when they came in for their Numdah rugs, about the most modest sale possible.
In charge of the lino & vinyl section was a studious young man not much older than myself who was in the midst of writing a book on floor coverings & generously shared his knowledge with me.
In charge of a small contracts department was a sophisticated chap who must have being doing the job as a hobby as he was always spending money on cares, especially Downton tuned Mini Coopers.
Quite how they viewed their junior Mr Barwell I have no idea but I like to think I was conscientious in my need to learn the trade.
The carpet department ( on the first floor) was opposite an extensive furniture department where I was on nodding terms with Garry who lived not far from me in in Ferndown. Before we had cars we’d travel together on the Hants & Dorset double-decker bus & some years later I encountered him again when he was the director of a local independent furnishers.
J J Allen had some interesting architectural features both inside & out. There was a delightful café in the form of a balcony overlooking a courtyard & beneath a glass roof & the Christchurch Road windows were deeply concave to reduce reflections, an expensive installation yet a popular feature for the more up-market shops & stores built pre-war & immediately post war.
As ever & still is wages in retail were deplorable so when J E Beales advertised for an experienced carpet salesman I crossed the road, where despite the increased money my new colleagues were unpleasant to work alongside & I soon left retail altogether.
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In 1958 I was sent to the beautiful town of Bournemouth as my wish was to join our family furnishing business in Sussex, however my father insisted on me working elsewhere to gain some retail knowledge and suggested the upmarket store of J.J. Allen. My elder brother got his experience in Selfridges Oxford St, but for me London or Bournemouth was no contest.
I began a five year apprenticeship working through most departments in the store, furniture, bedding, soft furnishings etc and even the antiques dept on the top floor. The store also sent me to a textile course at Bournemouth College as well as a 2 week course on design at Southampon University.
I was in digs with a wonderful widowed lady Mrs. Cooper near Iford Bridge,
( I believe her daughter was the millinary buyer for Brights store )
Mrs. Cooper was like a second mother to me and even bought me a second hand bike to get to work as my wage packet of £6.10s. a week did not allow me the luxury of bus fares.
The recollections of Mr. Bill Barwell the junior, and his time in the carpet dept. are a great reminder of my time working with him as I was that ” young” Mr. Bannister who perhaps did rate himself with the female staff, one lady in particular was the store telephone switchboard operator, Dianne, who had the most amazing silky voice.
The staff throughout the store were a privilege to work with, Mr Edwards despite his mannerism was a man from whom I learned a lot, Mr. Parsons with his wonderful west country accent, Mr. Reddish with whom I played golf with at weekends. Mr. Veals in the Furniture dept. he and I would watch Bournemouth FC at Dean Court.
I was fortunate to have served some well known personalities, Norman Wisdom, Mantovani the orchestra leader, Peter Allis the golfer and TV commentator.
My years in this wonderful town will be remembered for ever and I am so grateful for having been a member of a classy community, so after leaving at the end of 1963. and returning to join my family business, I recall a comment in my J.J. Allen staff guide book, ( which I still own ) that says…..
”A customer is a person who brings us his wants, it is our job to handle them profitably to him and to ourselves, and remember, goodwill like a good name is got by many actions and lost by one. ”
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Love to meet you and have a chat. A Bournemouth boy from Moordown , I am trying to put something back intoa Town that has given three generations of my family so much. I got elevted to Bournemouth Council in 2915 and re-elected to BCP Council. I worked in Beales , as did my mum and my children. Guess where my mum got the name Nigel from…..
In May , I was elected Chairman of BCP Council. As I say , love chat about all your observations.
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I was born in Bournemouth in 1957 and left in 1975 to go to university. I have never lived there since permanently but I am a regular visitor. It is heartbreaking to see how far the town centre has deteriorated. Getting rid of the roundabout with the lovely clock and floral arrangements to name but one. The whole place used to be so elegant with all its department stores. Westover Road was like Rodeo Drive. What a shame.
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As someone who has lived in Bournemouth since 1995, I have watched the steady decline of Bournemouth Town centre from an area that was vibrant and a joy to spend a few hours wandering around, to what it is today. An area that I, and everybody I know, actively avoids going to. I cannot help but think that it is either gross incompetence on the part of BCP council, or a deliberate ploy to run the area down to the point where the council can claim it has no choice but to turn the whole area into flats. It is such a shame, as pointed out elsewhere in this blog there are plenty of towns with thriving shopping centres full of independent and inviting shops, restaurants and entertainment venues, just look at Christchurch and Wimborne on our own doorstep!
I’m sorry to say it, but I don’t think there is actually any desire by BCP council to do anything about it.
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Good morning Peter ,
At last someone who can see through all the BS and total inept way BCP , Greene Broadhead & Mellor are jointly destroying OUR Town ..
I’m the owner of Richmond Classics a True award winning Bournemouth Born & Bred Business , est in 1988 .. You are a breath of fresh air ,
It would be great to meet you in person to sit down and have a chat .. please drop in to the store in Westover road at any time , & that goes for anyone who cares or has shopped in my store over the many years of trading both on Richmond Hill .Yelverton road Ladies / Kids store or Albert Road ..
We have dressed Bournemouth’s Fashionistas for over 34 years ..
Thanks
Keith
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Although I didn’t read the whole article. That was a very interesting to read and the photos were excellent too. I’m originally from South Africa and have been living here since August 1999. I have seen a load of changes to Bournemouth and I must say I much prefer the old Bournemouth to a degree. I’m glad they r made changes but have lost the soul of Bournemouth. This is just my opinion
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Bournemouth’s decline began in the mid sixties but we had Audreys, Verulam Place, Dean Court (barry Richards opening the batting) and the Winter Gardens(BSO) not to say John Ruston’s bookshop. We were spoilt…………… but by 1985 it was all more or less over. Progress ?
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Sorry to have to correct you, but Barry Richards would have been out of place opening the batting at Dean Court. He was however well worth watching at Dean Park. I think the goal posts at Dean Court and the playing surface was more suitable for football.
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Peter, fascinating but I contact you only to say I was a lime lime operator in the 60s and 70s too when Barry K was SM. Sadly I don’t remember you even though my first summer season was Bruce Forsyth and ended with, well, I don’t remember who the last was, but a good 14 years later. When were you there?
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I was there in 1967 alongside Dennis Hall in the lime box, for Frankie Vaughan and Tommy Cooper. Then I did the Tom Jones Show, but was mainly on the onstage mic, pulling it in and out, though I did some time up top (as relief, I assume) and then Ken Dodd, again mainly backstage, but some days I was on limes. I think for the later ones Barry employed me backstage, knowing he could put me up on limes if necessary. From memory, I was always paired with Dennis Hall (later the manager).
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Hi Peter, it was great to read your observations on the decline of our shared home town, Bournemouth. Born in 1964, I lived for the first 25 years of my life in Malmesbury Park Road. So not far from where your Dad lived in Capstone Road.
I went to St Andrew’s School, Shelbourne Road, and then Avonbourne School for Girls. Charminster was a lovely family area and I had the best childhood there. Unfortunately it’s not a family friendly area nowadays.
My Mum and Aunt worked for Wilkins the Bakers at the end of our road for many years. My Aunt, in her semi retirement worked at Bealsons, which she loved.
I left Bournemouth in 1999 for good, but I think it’s decline started many years before that. I am safely ensconced in beautiful South East Cornwall now and although it upsets me to say it, I could never live again in Bournemouth.
These are a few things that I remember of Bournemouth that made it the place I loved as a child, the loss of these things changed it for the worse:-
The Shell House
The Winter Gardens
Cinemas in Westover Road
The Ice Rink in Westover Road
Marks & Spencer in Bournemouth Town Centre
Debenhams in Bournemouth Town Centre
The Hampshire Centre
Being a Hampshire Hog!
Beales (do you remember the Easter and Christmas grottos?) and Bealsons
The Square with the roundabout and clock
Pier Approach Swimming Baths – remember the Aqua Shows?
BIC Swimming Pool
Yellow Buses
Winton Rec with the 10 foot drop down to the field below!!
Boscombe Hospital
The old bookshop in the Church in Ashley Road Boscombe
Bournemouth Town Centre is a ghost town now. When I recall what a thriving place it was when I was growing up and how the areas of Winton, Boscombe and Charminster shaped my life, it makes me sad to see how the heart has been ripped out of the Town. 😔
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What a list of things that have gone, with Yellow Buses the latest- though they are driving around with MORE stickers across the old logos. Next up,is distinctive yellow taxis. They are changing to white with a blue stripe. I thought yellow was a good idea. Highly visible and unusual enough to make it hard for people to pose as taxi drivers.
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Totally agree. I moved to Bournemouth from Birmingham in 1968. It was still a nice English holiday resort at that time. I’ve witnessed the entire decline with additional insight due to having policed the area. Very very sad. My Wife and I travel a fair bit, and it’s really nice to visit Towns that are completely unspoiled that have retained ages old architecture. We always end up discussing why Bournemouth has been ruined beyond all recognition, and who makes the decisions? 🤔
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Totally agree. I moved to Bournemouth from Birmingham in 1968. It was still a nice English holiday resort at that time. I’ve witnessed the entire decline with additional insight due to having policed the area. Very very sad. My Wife and I travel a fair bit, and it’s really nice to visit Towns that are completely unspoiled that have retained ages old architecture. We always end up discussing why Bournemouth has been ruined beyond all recognition, and who makes the decisions? 🤔
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It’s a true picture of my experience too…I know we look back with the old rose glasses..but the whole country seems to have been socially vandalised..immigration , me me me,.nobody seems to care about sod all…I’m glad life’s short,
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How sad to read about the decline of Bournemouth. I lived there from 1945/1960 and I adored every minute, skating, sailing , swimming , going to art school ,collecting tadpoles and wild flowers , I feel that I can’t revisit and destroy these wonderful memories …
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So sad to see what has happened to Bournemouth. I went to Ringwood Grammar School on West cliff Road and my grandparents retired to the town. It was known as Rover ville due to the number of retirees. It was however a lovely place to be. Plenty to see and do with a busy town centre. Now it’s derelict, a forgotten gem left to rot.
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Peter, I agree with everything you say. Born here ten years’ before you to Bournemouth-born parents, it’s shocking to see. To the moaners on Facebook, I usually reply that everywhere is suffering the same fate but you have highlighted similarities and differences. Yes, we need to do something in the Arts/Theatre worlds to fill voids left in Westover Road. Absolutely.
I also read in this lady week that the newly re-elected council leader, Vikki Slade, has said that, particularly post-pandemic we have changed the way we shop. Thus we need to think v carefully how to revamp our town centre. Another valid point.
Let’s hope we live yo see the better changes…..
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Agree with nearly all of this. A crying shame what has happened since the 60s. The council are the major culprits. Too many non-locals on it. Now we have BCP who are not interested in Bournemouth at all, so there is no hope in anything getting done. The only possible reason for forming BCP would be for it to become completely independent from anything to with Dorset and become a city region. However there is still much too much which is Dorset based, particularly within the NHS. BCP doesn’t even have it’s own Health Trust, unlike smaller cities like Southampton. I am also Bournemouth born and bred, as were my parents and grandparents.
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Interesting article. I was born in Bournemouth in 1984 in the old Boscombe hospital. I spent 30 years of my life in Bournemouth, I have recently in the last few years moved to a village just outside Andover. I still have family in Bournemouth, so infrequently return.
My, Wife my daughter and me have just returned from one such visit. We thought we would visit the Christmas market.
It has been obvious to me that the Town centre is going down hill rapidly. It’s a real shame, I remember as a child doing my Christmas shopping at places like House of Fraser (Dingles) Debenhams and the like, all now gone. I remember being in a school choir (St James) and singing at the Winter Gardens, now also gone. I remember the crazy golf at the end of the Winter Gardens, now abandoned and dirty.
The Christmas market had plenty of tat stalls and overpriced food outlets, I didn’t see many families at all to be honest, perhaps the weather didn’t help.
We were approached by beggars more than once.
I lived in Southbourne most of my life, yes Southbourne is a lot better and thriving, although sadly it looks like Fisherman’s Walk is unloved by the Council.
What happened to the town of my Childhood?
Bournemouth is grubby, intimidating and expensive.
I don’t doubt there are well Intentioned councillors at BCP, but I really believe the council have badly let the place down.
Can’t see my self returning with my family.
We went to Salisbury on the way home and yes you are right to point out Novichok had a major impact, but Salisbury is on the up. It was very vibrant, with a good Christmas market and felt safe to take my family.
I have pride in my old area of Southbourne, particularly now. I don’t have any pride in Bournemouth anymore as a whole, that’s sad, but it’s how I feel.
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My Wife and I loved Bournemouth we used to drive down from Somerset and occasionally stay for a weekend. Now since we have retired it is too expensive to come down for a days shopping let alone an overnight Hotel break because parking fees are outrageous to move from one area to another it is more parking costs.
Sorry goodbye Bournemouth.
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What do you expect would happen to a nation of shopkeepers when the customers find a better way to shop? Goods brought to them, the next day, and with a collection the following day if they don’t want it.
Shopping has moved from a leisure experience to a domestic experience, and so any town based around having shops is going to find no customers to speak of.
And then of course there is the constant pressure from the boomerati who go out of their way to try and enforce a 70’s style shopping centre on people who don’t want it, as well as snatching up multiple properties while objecting to new ones being built such that younger people are now paying most of their disposable income to the boomerati cartel in ever increasing rents.
So shopping has been driven away largely by the elderly population trying to strictly enforce their outdated views and methodology on a modern world which has no place for their silly suggestions. Instead of turning ex shops into homes for people to live and potentially bring money to a smaller town centre, they’re instead forced to life in substandard housing in which there’s little pride of home, no gardens, and no money to pay the boomer’s “high street” prices.
The decline of Bournemouth is due to the increase of it’s elderly population, which was already very high to begin with.
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I disagree. Bournemouth’s issue for decades was lots of people at the young end and old end of the spectrum and too few in the middle. That was true in 1970. Developers want to build student flats (tiny en-suites, 8 to a kitchen, no security of tenure) not affordable homes. Offices and department stores convert badly- they were designed for artificial light, not natural light.
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Peter I read this Blog with great interest but also with increasing sadness.
I was born in the original Boscombe Hospital during WW2, grew up in Lower Parkstone, went to Poole Grammar School in Seldown Road and, on leaving at 16 got a Scientific Assistant post at the newly opened Atomic Energy Establishment, Winfrith.
As a day-release student I was to continue my education at Bournemouth Technical College, at the Lansdowne, to gain my first Degree and latterly to supplement my income as a part-time lecturer in Physics.
As the eldest, and for a long time, only grandson of both my grandparents and war-widowed grandmother, I enjoyed, in retrospect, a fairly privileged upbring. Although not rich financially, we lived comfortably on Bournemouth Road, with Alexander Park just a short distance round the corner and, as I grew up just a two mile bike ride through “the woods” to Branksome Chine, and not much further to Sandbanks. In the summer we went to school on our bikes through Poole Park, which we could also use at lunchtime for tennis, rowing and sailing on the Lake and surreptitious, but forbidden, meetings with girls from the nearby Parkstone Girls Grammar School.
I celebrated both my legal right to buy an alcoholic drink in a pub and the advent of the Sixties in the same year. With the financial benefits of still living at home and with a decent job and salary, I had managed to get my first car, a pre-war Ford Popular soon after I passed my driving test at 17, but also celebrated soon changing it to the “cool” open top Hillman Super Minx in 1960.
The whole of greater Bournemouth was my oyster.
Looking back, I am embarrassed to remember that I looked, and acted, like a “poser”. Car, smart clothes and “shades”, even at night! But then so did many of my friends with either their cars or their scooters – never motorbikes!
The Judah and Curtis Rock & Roll Club in Boscombe on a Friday evening, Bournemouth Pavilion Dance on Saturday Night (Tony Blackburn’s band used to perform) and a “parade” along the Bournemouth Prom with friends on Sunday afternoon was my late teen weekend routine. And of course, in the Summer we enjoyed the influx of young female holidaymakers!
But all good things must come to an end and at a Pavilion Dance just after my 21st birthday I met the girl was to marry just over a year later.
Things changed. We bought a new build bungalow in the then growing town of Wimborne, of which I had fond childhood memories as my grandmother had frequently taken me to the weekly market as a treat during school holidays. The “poser” car had gone to be replaced with a series of more sedate, but practical family cars. But the beach always retained its attraction.
After a year in London doing a Master’s degree, I left the Atomic Energy Authority to head up the Nucleonics division of the Plessey Company in Sopers Lane, Broadstone. My parents, who by now had moved to Ferndown, had a beach hut at Sandbanks which meant our two daughters grew up with an inherited love of the beach and sea.
After eight years my wife and I, our two daughters and cat moved to Newport, South Wales where I formed a new division for Plessey. And then, three years after that, another career change bought us to Kent, never to permanently return to my beloved Bournemouth and Poole.
The decline in the quality shopping in central Bournemouth which you so eloquently describe really saddens me as it had played an important part in my early life.
My mother’s first job was as a shop assistant at Beales, where she befriended a colleague who was to become my Godmother. Leaving before the War she then worked in Stead and Simpsons, the shoe shop.
After I had grown up she returned to Bealesons in 1962 where she rose to be the specialist buyer for wome when it opened n’s accessories, handbags, gloves and scarves for Beales and Bealesons in Bournemouth and when it opened, the Poole Beales. She could well have known your mother. I well remember Beales Christmas parties and summer BBQs in Frank Beale’s family home garden. Could we have met?
My wife was working in the Furs department of Plummer Roddis when we met.
As well as these connections, the big stores were always there to visit and dream. Only a 10 minute bus ride from outside our house on the No 2 Hants & Dorset green bus, it was always easy to get to the Square when things were happening in one of the “Big Stores.”
In these early post war years, only my grandfather had a car. His carefully preserved pre -war Morris 12. But it was surprising how many adults and children it could (illegally) carry for Sunday “drives” to the Forest or Swanage.
I remember when the shop window lights were first switched-on after the war blackouts, and later into the 50s when my father took me to the Square to watch the Father Christmas street parade when he was going to his “Grotto” in one of the large department stores. It was the signal that the festivities were nigh.
Whilst nothing to do with shopping, I also fondly remember as kids playing with model boats on the Bourne stream (and falling in), the brass bands in the Bandstand in the same Lower Pleasure gardens and, of course, the firework show which marked the end of the Bournemouth summer Regatta. Neither to forget lighting the coloured fairy lights which adorned the wooden shapes in the Lower Gardens on a specified evening. We used to blow out the lit ones so we could relight them with our tapers. Health and Safety?
Both of these events necessitated special bus services to get the crowds home. No parking problems, no cars!
Simple pleasures when compared to the computer-generated laser shows of today.
I hope you agree the above history qualifies me, a “grumpy old man”, living away, to contribute to the despair and debate about the town centre’s decline and its reversal.
As you say it is not a problem unique to Bournemouth. The last 12 years of my working life were as Strategic Partnerships Manager with the two quangos, Business Link Kent and the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) so the problem of coastal town degeneration is not new to me, Margate, Ramsgate, Dover, Folkestone and Hastings to name but a few. Even with the benefit of “strategic plans” and access to large sums of European Regeneration Funds, we only had limited (and often time limited to the funding streams) success. You cite Hastings as one but there are many others.
With the last 10 years as retired and involved with local government I can also sympathise with the BCP Unitary in their problems of delivery with a large, multi-centric, constituency to satisfy. And in a time of diminishing “spare” public spending.
Perhaps be radical.
Come up with a plan that recognises the continuing changes in retail, out of town shopping and the increasing use of on-line buying. Forget the Square as a shopping centre and think how best to use its premium quality space. Accept that boarded up shops do not generate business rate incomes, dossers and rough sleepers do not pay council tax.
But an increased visitor footfall would grow the local economy. The question is – how to increase that footfall?
Improve your access and find new markets.
Seaside resort towns are, by definition, an in and out, not passing through, destination. At the END of the overcrowded existing road and rail networks.
So, use the sea!
Set out to be a “destination of choice” for the burgeoning Cruise industry. The Cruise ships were moored-off in Poole Bay during the Pandemic.
You have an attractive microclimate.
You already have an International Ferry Terminal and Airport with the necessary Customs/Immigration infrastructures.
You already have an Oceanarium and the Poole and Russel Cotes Museums.
You have an easily accessible ring of “Historic towns“, Wareham, Corfe Castle and the Purbecks, , Wimborne and the Minster, Ringwood and the New Forest, Christchurch, the Priory and River Avon and, further afield, Salisbury and Winchester with their Cathedrals, Swanage and the Jurrassic Coast. All the attractive excursion destinations that “cruisers” love, and can afford!
They are NOT the Booze Cruise, Stag/Hen night celebrants.
Having just returned from another Caribbean Cruise, I am still conscious of how a modest waterfall or former Governor’s Palace can be turned into a money-making Tourist Trip (Trap?).
And of course, Bournemouth beaches are as good as, or if not better, than theirs!
Look at demolishing the unused stores around the Square, as at about only 150 years old at the latest, they are not that old to create an architectural furore. Use the land to generously expand the beautiful Upper and Lower Gardens and Pavilion area into a major environmental and horticultural tourist destination in its own right. Free for the residents but the tourism income that replaces the non-existent business rates is better than nothing.
A Water Bus from the Ferry Terminal to Bournemouth Pier. Another revenue generator.
• Imaginative, YES.
• Radical, YES.
• Expensive, YES. But a potentially shared project also benefitting your parent Councils, Dorset and Hampshire.
• Unpopular, possibly YES to start, but justifiable with the right message to get the public and investors on-side.
Develop a strong and deliverable costed plan which stresses that this environmentally friendly, economic growth plan, provides revenue and jobs without the need for the new services like schools, medical facilities and hospitals etc that become necessary with new housing developments and population growth. Find a strong and reputable champion.
If only I was twenty years younger!!
Better than doing nothing and bemoaning your fate, most definitely, YES.
Tony Bartlett Jan 22nd 2024
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Thanks I enjoyed reading that – I’m sure my mum must have met your mum, both pre-war and post 1962 and your youth is similar to mine. What Bath did with Southgate should be the model- lots of parking, and a truly radical complete rebuilding. I suspect all of Old Christchurch Road / Gervis Place from Beales to what used to be Plummers needs demolishing in spite of Dingles frontage, plus Westover Road has the Ice Rink and two huge abandoned cinemas. A major developer could create something. The only bit worth saving is the arcade and Dingles frontage (in bits) but they could be taken down and built into part of a development. Retail has changed – smaller stores, more entertainment. Mixed use. Restore the Palace Court as a proper theatre too. Something like the O2 in Boscombe for live music.
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Very well writen. I used to live in Bournemouth and am broken hearted with what it has become.
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