Bournemouth

Bournemouth Pier with Ballard Down beyond

We have walked along the full length of the Bournemouth coastline (Sandbanks to Bournemouth Pier and Bournemouth Pier to Mudeford Spit). The obvious next step was to explore the town itself. I couldn't find a ready-made city walk, so I designed my own mainly relying on the Council's directory of Listed Buildings and of course Pevsner.

We started at The Square, having caught the bus from Poole, and walked through the Lower Gardens. The Gardens were constructed in what was Bournemouth Chine i.e. the steep-sided valley by which the River Bourne reaches the sea. The river flows now in a concrete channel on the left of the gardens as you walk down.

A more modern attraction is the Bournemouth Eye, a tethered hot air balloon which offers excellent views over the town and surrounding area.

Further on we passed people "enjoying" a desultory round of crazy golf. We then walked past the well-known, but architecturally unexciting, Pavilion and headed left at the sea front, with the Pier ahead of us. We walked up the hill past the Royal Bath Hotel, Bournemouth's oldest and turned into Russell-Cotes Road in search of the Russel-Cotes Museum. It was built as a private house, East Cliff Hall, by Sir Merton Russell-Cotes and presented to his wife in 1901

The front of the house is very strange ...

... but the entrance, off the coast path, is much more imposing. But really it does not amount to much externally - Pevsner goes so far as to call it "debased". Inside however it is a wonderful riot of late Victorian design, with some lovely 19th century paintings, including works by Rossetti, Albert Moore and Evelyn de Morgan.

We retraced our steps, crossed Bath Road into Upper Hinton Road to walk round to St Peters Church. This dates from 1841 but was substantially enlarged by the architect G E Street between 1853 and 1879.

In what looked like a Italian-style baptistery an Orthodox service was going on. In fact this small building is the Resurrection Chapel of 1926, built as a war memorial and mortuary chapel. The architect was Sir Ninian Comper

Now across the road into Gervis Place and right into Bournemouth Arcade. This was built in 1866 as two rows of shops and the glass roof was added six years later. It bears comparison with the arcades of Paris.

At the end, we turned left into Old Christchurch Road and admire two Victorian facades in a road to the right.

A bit further on we turned right into Richmond Hill, passing the 1932 Art Deco Echo building, the ground floor of which is now a restaurant.

Just up the hill is the ornate, Queen Anne style Granville Chambers (1885) and opposite is the wonderful Norfolk Royale Hotel, originally two separate hotels. The cast iron art nouveau verandas date from 1900.

We turned left into St Stephens Road to reach the church of the same name. Pevsner says that Bournemouth main architectural importance is its Victorian churches - a skim through the section on churches is a veritable roll-call of well-known Victorian architects. And of these "St Stephen's is the finest church in Bournemouth". It is the work of J L Pearson and was built 1881-98. We thought the overall impression was quite French.

Then left again to the front of the Town Hall. This is highly untypical of a civil building and looks more like a large hotel.

I discovered from Pevsner that this is for a good reason. It was built in 1880 as the Mont Dore: "an establishment for the reception of invalids, visitors and residents". He adds that it "hardly deserves a glance" and it is impossible to disagree.

We turned into Central Garden to return to The Square, and were delighted to spot Hampshire House on the left. This Art Deco block has some lovely details: painted capitals of the pairs of columns on the ground floor and coloured boat motifs higher up.

Distance: just under three miles.

Conditions: cloudy at first, but eventually hot and sunny.

Rating: three stars.

Reflections

Bournemouth effectively dates from 1810 and this selective tour of the town suggests that its current built character derives from significant building in the late 19th century and in the 1930s.

This is the second time I have developed a city walk from scratch - the previous one was around Warwick - and I must say it was an interesting and enjoyable process, and one which I will repeat. It adds greatly to the sense of discovery that you get from any deliberately undertaken town walk.

It is a bit surprising however that there is not an "official" one when near rivals like Poole and distant ones like Margate both have heritage trails. Obviously Bournemouth has less heritage being newer, but there is still lots to see. Maybe however it is too much to expect a heritage walk to take the place of crazy golf on a dull day.

Finally, I am conscious that we stayed close to the centre and didn't cover the cliffs or chines of the coast path or other areas like Boscombe. So perhaps there is a more comprehensive walk to be developed.