Introduction

Changes in building format used during early Bournemouth’s property development suggest visitor types altered. At the initial stages, the built environment took the shape of large, Italianate villas. Single households, including large service retinues would take each building. Later, building designs appeared to encompass smaller properties, while subdivision allowed several parties, without apparent relationship, to share the old, large structures.

The early built environment: cottages, villas, and houses

Villas

Bournemouth’s Marine Village property development began with the Bath Hotel, erected in the late 1830s. Soon a line of signature buildings appeared. 16 Italianate structures, known as Westover Villas, ran north like beached battleships abandoned by the adjacent sea. They acquired a form of media sub-branding, press references often consisting of the property number alone, as if readers knew their collective identity. William Gordon, esquire, undertook a second development, sited further inland, around the present Richmond Hill. He intended to make his villas the resort’s largest, but, despite press championing, his project ran out of funds. The abandoned site blighted the resort for years. Developers of Westover Villas may also have found marketing difficult. One supplier went bankrupt. Properties came to auction unfinished, advertisements spinning this as an advantage to prospects. Dreams of rivalling Bath’s Crescents or Torquay encountered market reality. Subsequent construction appears to have acknowledged this.

Cottages and Houses

This change in Bournemouth’s property development appears to have occurred during the 1840s. Building spread on both sides of the Bourne stream. Names of new buildings began to appear in the press, often as part of visitor lists. Many incorporated ‘cottage’ as part of their name: Ashley Cottage, Terrace Cottage, Essex Cottage, Adelaide Cottage. Their size would have beaten a rural cottage, but perhaps not the older villas. Around a dozen emerged during the 1840s, according to the press coverage and the 1851 Census. Advertisements also featured unnamed buildings for rent, whose physical details and size matched those of Westover Villas. During 1851-1856 a similar number of new names appeared, suggesting perhaps as much as doubling of the building rate. These included villas and cottages but also ‘houses’ – Morley House – and ‘places’ – Dorset Place, as well as Richmond Terrace, a remnant of the Gordon development.

Large buildings for single families and retinues

Ornate, exotic exteriors

The 1836 visionary press announcement for the Marine Village property development promised fashionable Italianate and Gothic villa designs. Surviving photographs suggest that architects fulfilled this promise. Distinctive belvedere towers embodied the intended Italianate look and feel. Advertisements for villa 5 and 13 referred to a ‘tower-room’ and a ‘lofty tower’. In addition to style, the towers offered the functional benefits of sea views. These buildings anticipated the future Osborne House, to appear on the Isle of Wight within the next decade. Charles Mate’s account of Bournemouth referred to the ‘distinct and peculiar architectural features’ employed by the architect B. Ferrey for the Marine Villas. In 1840, a description of the growing watering place included the phrase ‘numerous fanciful erections of villas’. This style played a role in the resort’s marketing. No need for the affluent to make continental tours when they could experience that architecture in Bournemouth.

Extensive interiors

Pictures and advertisements suggest that the villas had individual shapes, but shared cues and features. Villas 11 and 12 had a large, underground cellar for a basement. The ground floor consisted of a dining room and two sitting rooms as well as the kitchen and offices. Upstairs held six bedrooms, a water-closet and a drawing room. Dimensions quoted gave 34.5 square metres for the dining room, 18.5 square metres for the sitting rooms and almost 26 square metres for the upstairs drawing room. Villa 5’s description sounded very similar. Villa 7 also had seven bedrooms. Villas 14 and 15 stood on a plot sized at a quarter acre or about a thousand square metres. Where included, outside details referred to walled gardens (bricked), iron palisades, shrubbery, and carriage drives. Buildings in this property development also held a coach-house and stables, those for villa 5 consisting of 3 stalls.

Changing commercial usage of the buildings

In the beginning: family, kin, visitors and servants

Occupants of Westover Villas in 1851, for the most part, consisted of single nuclear families, but including a mixture of extended members and visitors, all supported by several servants. The wealthy Lancashire businessman, Clement Royds, in number 6, had with him, in addition to his wife and adult daughter, a niece, a nephew, and a visitor. The building accommodated seven servants, including a butler. A similar set-up existed next-door. Villa 10 had six servants. Other villas had around three servants on average. Richmond Terrace, now built, appeared to cater for similar households, well-staffed with servants. A Jamaican-born annuitant in number 2 had five servants, including a butler, Colonel Simmonds, once of the East India Company, had three servants. Doctor Edward Mainwaring at 5 had five servants, while the Reverend Edward Bayley (6), had his wife, five children, three gentlemen visitors and four servants.

Onset of the lodging-house keepers

A decade later, the set-up showed change, subdivision of properties having occurred. In Dr Mainwaring’s former property now lived three households, including a lodging-house keeper. Such individuals also existed at three of the remaining properties on Richmond Terrace, as did subdivision in the majority. Segmentation had occurred also in the majority of Westover Villas, three households in three properties, four others split between two groups. In both Richmond Terrace and Westover Road the number of servants had diminished to a great extent, for the most part one or two. Already in the early 1850s press discussion had occurred as to the ‘correct’ type of people that Bournemouth should attract, the eternal class versus mass debate. This intensified at the end of the decade, the 1861 Census suggesting that property development and configuration had tilted from large, wealthy parties. Self-catering had ebbed into partial or full-service provision.

Takeaway

Bournemouth’s early property development appeared to consist of signature structures aimed at affluent, if not aristocratic, families supported by full servant retinues. Although the press trumpeted the high social level enjoyed by early visitors, perhaps insufficient people came. By the end of Bournemouth’s first period, a new category of visitor or style of visit may have entered. New building adopted different, perhaps more compact, designs. The older buildings underwent reconfiguration to accommodate visitors unattended by large staffs.

References

For references and discussion, contact here. Also thanks here and here for photographs.