History

Which parts of the area are included in Pokesdown? cont’d

A PDF of the maps is available here where they can be enlarged for easier viewing. Images can also be clicked on to open a higher resolution image in a separate tab.

This is the modern-day political ward of “Boscombe East & Pokesdown”. It was previously called just “Boscombe East”, even though it always included Pokesdown, but the name was changed in October 2018:¹⁵²

This map shows the modern-day (2021) boundary of the suburb or district of Pokesdown – a much smaller area than the other Pokesdown boundaries, but Rosebery Park Baptist Church is still in it (both current location and site of original chapel)! The original C of E parish church, St James, is still here too.

The next map shows the modern-day boundary for the Parish of St James, Pokesdown, over-laid with the boundaries for the 1895 to 1901 Pokesdown Urban District, the 2018 Boscombe East & Pokesdown Ward, and the area locals today might consider to be the suburb or district of Pokesdown. And this is why it’s difficult to say where Pokesdown begins and ends – what year and which aspect are being discussed?!¹⁵⁴

By postcode boundaries, Pokesdown is split, with the north side of Christchurch Road falling into BH7, and the south side into BH5, so postcode boundaries are not a help in defining where Pokesdown is! BH6 starts just to the east of Southbourne Road.¹⁵⁵

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Rosebery Park Baptist Church, 812-814 Christchurch Road, between Boscombe and Pokesdown, Bournemouth, BH7 6DF

Which parts of the area are included in Pokesdown?

A PDF of the maps is available here where they can be enlarged for easier viewing. Images can also be clicked on to view higher resolution image in a new tab.

Here is a map showing the 1859 boundary of the then new Parish of St James, Pokesdown – based on the description given by J.A. Young¹⁴⁷ – note, it covers a MUCH larger area then we are used to considering as Pokesdown!

When Pokesdown became an Urban District in 1895, the boundaries were defined as running from the sea front to Wollstonecraft Road, and just east of Crabton Close Road, along south of Christchurch Road to Warwick Road, along the railway, which was crossed to take in Clarence Park, and so over part of King’s Park to beyond Harewood Avenue. It then re-crossed Christchurch Road and the railway, running alongside the line to Cranleigh Road, after which it turned towards Southbourne Road, between Irving and Watcombe Roads. It then turned into Belle Vue Road and along Clifton Road to the sea front. Thus it included the Shelley, Portman, Stourwood and Stourfield Estates.¹⁴⁸

The boundaries of Pokesdown seem to have always been blurry! As early as 1896, Rev. Dr. Moore White stated “for all practical purposes, none can tell where Boscombe ends and Pokesdown begins”¹⁴⁹, and in 1916, Mrs Arthur Bell described Pokesdown as “a mere continuation of Boscombe”.¹⁵⁰ The boundaries have also retracted, and today’s Pokesdown covers a much smaller area than it did in 1895.

For example, Fisherman’s Walk was originally part of Pokesdown. Where we now have the Fisherman’s Walk Zig Zag to take us down to Fisherman Walk’s Beach (Southbourne), that used to be Fisherman’s Walk, Pokesdown leading to ‘Fisherman’s Steps, Pokesdown’, aka ‘Pokesdown Steps’, leading to Pokesdown Beach! The steps, first constructed in 1891, were replaced by a carefully engineered sloping path in the early months of 1906.^150a We can see in the Palladium Cinema advert (on page 3 of History) that the district address of Fisherman’s Walk was given as Southbourne by 1932, which could be evidence that this change happened a long time a go… or it could be another example of someone choosing their preferred district name!

This is the modern-day (2020) parish boundary of St James, Pokesdown. The 1859 parish has, over the years, been divided into multiple parishes:¹⁵¹

The copy and paste citation for this page: The History of Rosebery Park Baptist Church and Pokesdown – Pokesdown: its boundaries, Page 1. Author: Michelle Fogg. Date: May 2022. Url: https://roseberypark.org/history/pokesdown-boundaries-1/

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Rosebery Park Baptist Church, 812-814 Christchurch Road, between Boscombe and Pokesdown, Bournemouth, BH7 6DF

Earliest known written records with the name “Pokesdown”:

Year: c.1586. Evidence: Richard Morris of Pokesdown, Christchurch on a list of people fined for buying pirates’ goods (part of The Cecil Papers).^124d

Year: 1660. Evidence: Henry Mantle of Pokesdown elected a churchwarden of Christchurch Priory.

Year: 1662-63. Evidence: churchwarden accounts record the receipt of one shilling from Henry Mantle of Pokesdown in payment “for a place for his wife where his mother did sit”.¹²⁵

Year: 1734. Evidence: Christchurch Poor Rate Book, includes the line “The Lady’s Mews for Bugby’s at Pokesdown“.¹²⁶

Year: 1800. Evidence: the will of Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne, Stourfield House – she left an annuity for the Widow Lockyer of Pokesdown Farm.¹²⁷

1870 map of Pokesdown showing earliest recorded settlements of Pokesdown Farm (date unknown, but pre-dates Stourfield House) and Stourfield House (est. c.1766). See Sources note 128.

Where did Pokesdown get its name from?

There is no definitive answer about the origins of the name “Pokesdown”, but the different theories are:

1. It might be a corruption of ‘Peaksdown’ – ‘Peak’ – a high point in the downs (‘down’ meaning low hills covered in grass);¹²⁹
2. It may have been a persons name associated with the down – ‘Pocs’ Down’, or the Old English surname ‘Puca’, as in ‘Puca’s Down’ has morphed into ‘Pook’ in Middle English, as in ‘Pook’s Down’;¹³⁰ or if derived from the Saxon personal name “Pok” or “Pokok” then Pokesdown would mean “the hill of the Pok family”;^130a
3. It could be from ‘Pooks Down’ where ‘pooks’ is the local dialect word for ‘haycock’ (cone shaped pile of hay). But Coates says “the 13th century with a medial ‘-s-‘ speaks against this”;¹³¹
4. It’s from ‘Pig’s Down’, from the days when people were allowed to keep pigs at will, before it was banned as part of the urbanisation;^131a
5. It was an area for “poor souls stricken with the pox” = “Poxdown” (but I haven’t found any corroborating evidence);^131b
6. The most popular (if unsubstantiated) theory is that Pook’s (or Puck’s) Down was referring to the fairies or pixies or goblins living on the downs! ‘Pook’s Down’ is Middle English for ‘Goblin’s Hill’.¹³²

The fact that the “pig theory” is only in the newspapers and isn’t in any of the history books makes me think, either (a) it’s a theory made up by residents with local knowledge, but rejected by the academics, who are carefully analysing the etymology (the study of the origin and history of words); or (b) the academics were studying the name “Pokesdown” fifty-years-plus after the locals who could remember pig keeping at Pokesdown had passed, but years before the British Newspaper Archive was online with a searchable database of newspapers reporting on Bournemouth life, and therefore missed this titbit.

The theory about “Pox-down” comes from the Holdenhurst Village History website, which says “It is recorded that there was a Leper Hospital in Christchurch, the owners of which owned land and a cottage at Holdenhurst during the reign of Edward III [1312-1377] – it is thought that centuries ago poor souls stricken with the ‘pox’ were brought from ‘Poxdown’ (Pokesdown) for treatment at the then named ‘Hospice of St Mary Magdalen'”. But I have been unable to find the source of this theory, or any corroborating evidence, and it’s not mentioned in the history books. If you know of any information backing this theory, let us know!

Pooka, Puck and Pixies…

When it comes to the favourite theory, Your Irish Culture explains:¹³³

The meaning of Pooka, pronounced poo-ka, is from the old Irish word ‘púca’, which means ‘goblin’. There are many variations of the spelling Pooka including Púca, Plica, Phuca, Pwwka, Puka, and Pookha all of which are totally acceptable. It is possible that the origin of the word Pooka may come from the Scandinavian word, Pook or Puke meaning ‘nature spirit’… A Pooka is a shapeshifter and can take any form it chooses. Usually, it is seen in the form of a horse, dog, rabbit, goat, goblin, or even an old man.

The Pooka has been imagined in cinema as the large rabbit-type creature, called Harvey, in the 1950 James Stewart film, and a far more disturbing rabbit-type creature in the 2001 Jake Gyllenhaal film, Donnie Darko!

But, going by the newspaper articles which discuss the name “Pokesdown”, where there are references to folklore or mythological creatures, it’s not giant, scary, malevolent rabbits (Pookas) that people are imagining, but rather, “Puck” and his fairies!

Tracing the etymology or folklore wandering path(s) that led from “pooka” to “puck”, the Encyclopedia Britannica says of “Puck”:

Puck, in medieval English folklore, a malicious fairy or demon. In Old and Middle English the word meant simply “demon.” In Elizabethan lore he was a mischievous, brownielike fairy also called Robin Goodfellow, or Hobgoblin. As one of the leading characters in William Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Puck boasts of his pranks of changing shapes, misleading travelers at night, spoiling milk, frightening young girls, and tripping venerable old dames. The Irish pooka, or púca, and the Welsh pwcca are similar household spirits.¹³⁴

In 2019 local residents were invited to vote on whether they wanted to have a Neighbourhood Plan, and voted ‘Yes’ by 93.48%… but the turnout was only 13.74%, which indicates a disappointing degree of disinterest, after so much thought and effort has/had gone into creating a plan for the betterment of the neighbourhood. The Plan boundary follows the boundary of the combined wards of Boscombe East and Boscombe West. The consultation document explains:¹²⁴

The community from Boscombe and Pokesdown decided to join up and prepare a joint Neighbourhood Plan in 2015 following various planning decisions and public realm alterations within the Forum’s boundary that they did not support. They were very concerned about the number of older buildings being replaced by contemporary developments of poor quality design, which provided only small flats and no family accommodation. They were equally concerned about the loss of retail floor space and the replacement of historic shopfronts.

Heritage is at the centre of the NP, as is the provision of family housing for which there is an overwhelming need. The Forum want people to stay in the area and for this to be an established sustainable place to live. The high street has a number of significant heritage assets and the Forum wish to celebrate these by having policies which will improve the public realm, renovate building façades and provide for a variety of uses so the vitality and viability of the area is improved.

The area has a number of regeneration initiatives taking place, but these are focused around Boscombe and there is little coordination between Pokesdown and Boscombe. The Forum is keen to ensure that the regeneration of the area is heritage led and boosts local creative businesses. The area also contains a number of development sites and the Forum were keen to have an active say in what these sites are developed for. They want to ensure that these developments directly benefit the immediate environment and neighbourhoods in which they are located, and for the community to have a say in the planned delivery of infrastructure.

The Forum has a strong desire to maintain and enhance Pokesdown as a specialist shopping area.

BAP8: Managing our high street^124a – Zone 6: Pokesdown – Boscombe and Pokesdown Neighbourhood Forum will work with Partners, on an investment program for environmental improvements to the shop fronts, buildings facades and vacant units in Pokesdown. A mix of uses excluding residential will be encouraged at ground floor level in accordance with Bournemouth Local Plan Policies.

In 2020 a new mural of doves was painted along the Pokesdown Station platform wall by artist Krishna Malla, who was commissioned by Network Rail to improve the appearance of the station. Krishna explains:

“My longest wall, heaviest brief and a project that’s been a long time in the making. This station has had a hard time over the past few years for depressing circumstances surrounding mental health, and Network Rail asked me to create a positive mural to help uplift the area. Under no disillusion that a mural will solve anyone’s problems, it has given me a chance to draw attention to this and offer some kind of support through the voice my murals have given me. I chose Doves as the subject matter because of their symbology…”^124b You can read her full description here.

A Daily Echo article, 20/08/2020, adds: “Other measures to improve the station have included signage from The Samaritans and the introduction of Land Sheriffs and Trespass Welfare Officers.”^124c

Rev. Simon Bartlett became the minister of Rosebery Park Baptist Church in September 2019. Before this he worked as an engineer on power stations and then spent 17 years working in Azerbaijan.  Simon is married to Priscilla, who is from Sri Lanka.  They have two children, both now at university. 

Photo: Rev. Simon Bartlett and Priscilla Bartlett.

Throughout its history, you can see the ongoing theme of Rosebery Park Baptist Church reaching out to the surrounding community and inviting everyone in:

building the original chapel, 1892 – quadrupling the size of the chapel – still not enough room for all the people attending! – the first sixty years of Rosebery Park Baptist Church saw the membership increase tenfold – eventually manage to move to the needed much larger premises, October 1951;

Rev. Perkins (1899 to 1918 at RPBC) “esteemed from one end of the town to the other as a Christian gentleman, as an earnest worker, and as a most strenuous pastor”;

hiring (with other local churches), and being able to fill to over-flowing the Astoria and Palladium Cinemas in the 1930s, which seated thousands;

‘meeting and greeting’ holidaymakers as they arrived at the train station and coach stop in the heyday of the British seaside holiday in the 1950s;

changing the front of the building in 1969 to literally open it up with wider central doors and a glass panel between entrance and main hall;

for the church’s 88th anniversary in 1979, holding an exhibition to tell local residents about the church’s work and history of service and ministering to the community;

in 2012 being excited to open its doors to the community by serving teas and coffees as a venue on the route of the Olympic Torch;

with ‘Churches Together in Boscombe’ being involved with ‘Open the Book’ taking Bible stories into schools, and ‘Boscombe Angels’ who were a listening ear and a caring presence for those out on a Friday or Saturday night (2010-20).

In his ‘Welcome’ message, Simon comments:

“We could describe the few hundred metres between the church and Pokesdown Station as the Portobello Road of Bournemouth.  There’s a concentration of antique shops selling everything from bric-a-brac to high-class antiques, and a great selection of bakeries, cafés and restaurants.  But good as all this is, we hope that at Rosebery Park you will find something of even greater value!”

You are welcome to join us on Sundays at 10.30am or 4pm for our services.

The copy and paste citation for this page:
The History of Rosebery Park Baptist Church and Pokesdown, Page 20 (2019 to 2020). Author: Michelle Fogg. Date: May 2022. Url: https://roseberypark.org/history/2019-to-2020-rosebery-park-and-pokesdown-20/

In 2012, Pokesdown South Residents Association won a £22,000 Lottery grant to purchase a 14ft-high welcome sign featuring a picture of village life from around 1900, a plaque showing the history of the area, two new benches, two solar lamps, four oaks, and more shrubs. Pam Ruthvan from the Association explained to the Echo newspaper: “we want to give [Pokesdown] back the identity it’s lost over the years.”¹²⁰

Then in April/May 2012, this Residents Association and Pokesdown traders merged to become the new Pokesdown Community Forum.^120a

Writing in 2015, Milla and Stuart at ‘Beyond Beach Huts‘ described Pokesdown:¹²¹

Pokesdown starts and ends at its train station which was opened in 1886 and it seems like the station has only had some TLC about 100 years later waiting for another 100 years to pass. Totally stuck in the 80s! There is of course also the small green opposite the train station. It is the centre of a community project and even received a lottery grant! It’s used for small events and days commemorating the history of the area. Now, this is pretty much it. If you’ve found these areas, you are at the heart of Pokesdown!

The area has its own character if you compare it to its more well-known neighbours even though there is a blurred line as to where one ends and the other starts. Pokesdown has almost no high street chain type stores with pretty much everything being local independents. This is solely to celebrate! Also known as the Vintage Quarter, the large amount of antique and vintage shops lining the one and only shopping street in the district is hard not to notice. These aren’t only the expensive “proper” antiques but mostly affordable with great finds!

The stretch of Christchurch Road to Pokesdown used to be full of empty shops but slowly the area has started to regain its value through this very welcomed movement… There are also plenty of chances to have a tea or refreshments along the way …

The ones we’ve collected on this map are by no means all of them and we’ve probably missed quite a few gems, so the best thing you can do is just go on a discovery! The area is changing constantly (in a good way), so this map might be outdated in no time at all. More shops will probably open and a few will close – you know, the normal lifeline of a small shopping street.

A Daily Echo article from May 2013 explains:¹²²

“Pokesdown Community Forum has been working with Bournemouth Council to track down landlords for the area’s empty shops so they can be occupied by home-grown vintage and creative businesses. Over the last three years they have helped fill more than 40 shops.”

Pokesdown Community Forum have also been spearheading the decade-plus long campaign to make Pokesdown Station accessible, where the lifts from the platforms to the footbridge have been out-of-order since about 1984, meaning the only access is via 42 steps. Full details of the key issues can be read here:
The Case For Pokesdown Station – Making The Station Accessible.
You can sign the petition here.^122a There’s even a ‘Pokesdown Station Song‘!

This next map shows the area still struggling in many ways. The ‘Indices of Multiple Deprivation’ measures and combines seven areas -income, employment, health, education, living environment, crime, and barriers to housing & services- to assess if individuals and families lack basic necessities.

“Deprivation in the BCP area is polarised in a small number of highly deprived areas. They have been split into 4 categories of deprivation: Entrenched, Escalating, Continuing and Emerging. Clusters of deprived areas focus around 2 wards: Boscombe West and Kinson. All 5 areas with ‘Entrenched deprivation’ are within these two wards. Deprivation in these areas appears to be spreading or diffusing into neighbouring or nearby areas. A number of areas with ‘Escalating’ and ‘Emerging’ deprivation, where relative levels of deprivation have increased border or are close to these areas.” ~ BCP Insight Briefing Paper.¹²³

Alison was appointed in 2009 as part-time minister. Alison is married to Rev. Grenville Overton, who was then Regional Minister for the Southern Counties Baptist Association.

She was a very able pastor, and encouraged children’s work. Under her, we became involved with Moorlands College, and started to have students from there on placement with us. The first was Seidel Abel Boanerges (see below). At around the same time, we appointed a Children, Youth & Family Worker – Rick Cole, who with his wife Helen, had just finished at Moorlands. Sadly in January 2015 he died from a heart attack, leaving a young widow. He had managed to build up some children’s activities, and his death left the church reeling.

These 2010 and onwards articles are available as plain text (and therefore text-to-audio compatible) by following the link given underneath each to their original source.

Alison was much involved with Churches Together in Boscombe, and had suggested the local churches start an Open the Book team, taking Bible stories into a local school. She began the group, which continued the work even during the Coronavirus lock-down, via videos and messages.

She also introduced Boscombe Angels (Street Pastors), of which she was one to start with, but found she could not do that and all the other activities!¹¹⁷ There were six baptisms, holiday clubs, restarting Brownies, the after school club, activity days, Wednesday coffee morning group, Bible study, outreach coffee mornings, plus, afternoon church. Alison retired in 2017.

In 2009 the Pokesdown Mural Project was proposed by a local action group based at Scribe Tattooing, and they secured funding from the council to commission urban artist Soap (aka Adam Klodzinski) to design and paint a mural on the long blank wall along Pokesdown Station platform. Work began on this in June 2011. In September that year it won the Community Rail Awards for Community Arts Scheme.^117a

Rev Seidel Abel Boanerges was the Associate Minister at Rosebery Park. This post was created to oversee the evangelism and outreach of the church. He joined the leadership team at Rosebery Park in 2012 and served till end of 2015 before taking on a new role as the Director of Outreach at Capernwray Bible School at Capernwray Hall.¹¹⁸

The booklet Rosebery Park Baptist Church: The First Hundred Years, 1891 to 1991, by Robert J. Jeans, includes much more detail on things such as internal changes to the buildings, what roles individuals undertook in the church, the different groups and activities run over the years, what outside causes and missionaries we supported, and the people who oversaw the church (called Moderators) whilst we were in-between Ministers.

Post-1991, during the “interregnum” (Minister-less gap!) between Rev. Philip Parfitt and Rev. Alison Overton, Rev. Adrian Thomas acted as Moderator, and retired minister, Rev. Derek Yates became interim minister and helped produce the new church covenant. He remained until Rev. Alison Overton was appointed. Between Rev. Alison Overton and Rev. Simon Bartlett, the interregnum was moderated by Rev. Ian Coffey of Moorlands College, and we appointed Chris Humphries (also from Moorlands) as interim minister.¹¹⁹

Two nearby changes that may have impacted shopper footfall in Pokesdown were the pedestrianisation of Boscombe’s main shopping area in 1990^115a, and the 2003 upgrade from the worn-out Hampshire Centre to the new Castlepoint Shopping Park on the same site.^115b

An online search for photos of Pokesdown in the 1990s only yields the demolition of some of the long-established buildings. These losses are looked on sadly now by some, but I’m not sure what the mood was at the time. Was the voice of the Bournemouth Civic Society -who were trying to highlight the loss of buildings with heritage- drowned out by profit, or community apathy, or were these changes seen by some/many as helpful modernisation? What else was going on in Pokesdown during this period? From the point of view of my research so far, it’s a blank, because the British Newspaper Archive currently “only” has Bournemouth newspapers up to 1930s, I haven’t found the later equivalent of Tony Crawley’s 1963 ‘Limelight on Pokesdown’ article, and the Daily Echo online doesn’t start until about 2006. If I get to access new material in the future I may be able to provide more information.

The 1970s fire station at the top of Seabourne Road was also demolished about 1990 (but it’s hard to imagine anyone missed it).

This Victorian building, 896 Christchurch Road (the former Science, Art & Technical School) was saved after extensive repairs were carried out during 1995-98, by it’s new owners, ‘Help & Care’, with support from  the National Lottery and Charitable Trusts. ‘Help & Care’ occupied this building from 1994 until April 2021, and undertook further extensive repairs, which included restoring much of the original stone work, in 2013.^115e

Rev. Philip Parfitt was Minister at RPBC from 1997 to 2006. Philip, Christine (his wife) and Annabel their daughter were all involved with the church. While he was ‘in office’, the inside of the church building was completely re-vamped, the pews removed, the staging at the front also. The pulpit was removed from the wall under the cross (many in the church were unhappy about that), and the whole place painted! It was a huge job, and while that was happening, the services took place in the downstairs hall. New legislation had come  in regarding having disabled toilets, so the Deacons’ Vestry was turned into one, and the door into the church put where it now is. Scaffolding had to be erected for the painting to be done. New furniture was bought – for the church as well as for the hall, replacing the plastic chairs now upstairs. New carpet was also bought for the church.¹¹⁶

A PDF of the newspaper articles and documents is available here. They are images, and not plain text, but they can be enlarged for easier viewing this way.

Rev. Reg Cook started at RPBC in 1983. His wife, Barbara, started a Mother and Toddler Group at the beginning of 1985 which often operated to capacity, and a keep fit class!

RPBC joined others in the Boscombe East area for an extensive outreach programme to the growing Littledown Estate.

Boscombe Churches decided to hold a joint Sunday evening service every two months in the participating churches in rotation.¹¹³

Rev. Reginald J. Cook, Minister at RPBC 1983 to 1997. Photo property of RPBC.

In 1991, with a membership of 146,¹¹⁴ the church celebrated its one hundred year anniversary. Writing in the church’s ‘Good News’ magazine, Reg Cook said:

“…the church isn’t about changing members or ministers, about changing organisations or hymns, but about the unchanging Christ. ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.’ says the writer of Hebrews. ‘O Thou who changest not, abide with me,’ says H.F. Lyte’s hymn. We thank God that amidst all the changes in our life and circumstances there is the unchanging Christ from whose love nothing in life or in death can separate us. That is what we are celebrating in 1991, the same faith that brought together those 25 in 1891 and with the same vision we go forward into the future, not knowing where it will lead us, but sure of the love of God in Christ Jesus.”¹¹⁵

Near the start of Rev Dennis Banfield’s time as RPBC Minister, 1969/70, the alterations to the front aspect of the church were finally finished, after delays caused by reaching agreement on new fire precautions.

The new central entrance and glass divide between vestibule and sanctuary (i.e. between the entrance area and the part of church where services are held) gave the building the substantially different look it has today.⁹⁹

By 1971 the evening congregation had grown, and this was attributed to the local distribution of St John’s gospels by the church. House prayer groups were set up in areas which most people could easily reach, and Rev. Banfield led a Baptist Union Training Programme.¹⁰⁰

For the church’s 88th anniversary, an exhibition with static displays, and slides, and members to meet-and-greet, was held over four days to tell local residents about the church’s work and history of service and ministering to the community.¹⁰¹

Jeans writes about Rev. Banfield’s eleven-year ministry at RPBC: “Over twenty had confessed their personal commitment to Christ in baptism, the standard of worship had never been allowed to drop, spiritual life and awareness had deepened. Church and ecumenical fellowship had been strengthened and the neighbourhood made more aware of Christian faith, witness and service which were available in their locality.”¹⁰²

Twenty-one years on from RPBC moving into its current building on Christchurch Road, and the former occupants of the building are still meeting in the venue they moved to in Haviland Road, with the name “Keswick Baptist Church” taken with them from “Keswick Hall”. While Rosebery Park Baptist Church has taken its name from the Rosebery Park Estate of yesteryear with them to what was “Keswick Hall”!! The original names, “Keswick” and “Rosebery Park”, were never inspired by any local connection – the interesting, if potentially confusing, history of church names!¹⁰³

From the 1960s, holidays abroad were an option for more and more people, enabled by larger and faster aircraft (bringing economies of scale), the easing of restrictions on taking currency abroad, and rapid hotel construction in many Mediterranean countries.¹⁰⁴ One website says: “By 1979, for the first time in history, Britons spent more on overseas holidays than on holidays at home.”¹⁰⁵

Summaries of what was going on in the nation and locally in the late 1970s – 1980s onwards often include sobering references to “the decline of the seaside town”.

SeasideHistory.co.uk’s look at the tourist statistics suggests that rather than there being a dramatic reduction in number of visitors to seaside towns (LESS VISITORS), the problem was LESS MONEY being spent in seaside towns, as the more affluent people were now going abroad for their main holiday, with UK seaside resorts as an additional short holiday.¹⁰⁶

The centre of Bournemouth off-set these challenges by concentrating on being home to more language schools than any other town in the UK, a growing university, and the conference trade – the Bournemouth International Centre was built in 1984 specifically to be a magnet for this.¹⁰⁷

But Boscombe, along the coastline, one and half miles away, sadly does fit the “decline” picture. As the ‘Boscombe Strategic Assessment’ (published 2011) explains: “The decline of the English holiday market saw the area’s hotels and guest houses turned into Houses of Multiple Occupation (HMOs), attracting the homeless, vulnerable households and migrant workers. Demand for services is concentrated in the area – this comes from drug and alcohol users, the unemployed and benefit claimants. The problems are not unique – they are experienced by many seaside towns. Intensive efforts are needed to tackle severe social problems including high levels of population transience and the chaotic lifestyles of some residents.”¹⁰⁸

It’s hard to tell where Pokesdown fits into this story. By the 1970s it’s been fifty years or more since Pokesdown was considered to extend as far as the beach! Checking the 1973 Kelly’s Directory by road names¹⁰⁹ shows there were few hotels or B&Bs listed in Pokesdown itself. And if we fast-forward to 2017, the Council says there are 119 licensed ‘Houses of Multiple Occupation’ in Boscombe West, compared to only 23 in Boscombe East ward (which includes Pokesdown).¹¹⁰ But the Christchurch Herald article about Pokesdown in 1963 identified one of the largest local employers as the New Era Laundry, with a staff of 170 and a fleet of 15 delivery vans, “dealing with some 90,000 articles in their summer peak periods”, including 20,000 sheets.¹¹¹

Maybe, like the early years of its urbanisation -when Pokesdown was where the artisans and workers lived who built and served Bournemouth- Pokesdown was still home to the workers, who were now dependent for their living on working in the supporting services needed by the tourist trade? Maybe both locals and holidaymakers were spending less money in the local shops?

In addition to tourism related changes in the economy, local shops may also have lost trade due to the opening of an out-of-town shopping centre in 1968, The Hampshire Centre, on nearby Castle Lane West, but the impact it had is uncertain. Did the convenience of shopping there make the need to “pop” into Pokesdown redundant? Were the type of shops available at The Hampshire Centre in direct competition with Pokesdown shops? Or was it more of a threat to the centre of Bournemouth? Also, The Hampshire Centre was not necessarily a success story. By the mid 1970s a number of its units were empty.¹¹²