Respectable stability
Introduction
Victorian Bournemouth (248) examines residency patterns evident for Waterloo Road, part of an early road grid established in Winton. The study combines quantitative data (census records) with qualitative analysis (social profiling, historical interpretation) to create Waterloo Road’s early biography. Mapping the census listings onto the street’s extant buildings adds texture to its story.
Victorian Bournemouth (248): geography
Instant communities
The area to become Winton attracted settlers during the last third of the Victorian period. A map published in 1897 shows an integrated street layout consisting of three connecting grids. These lay along the east side of today’s Wimborne Road, running from Alma Road to St John’s church. Street nomenclature suggests that two consisted of planned, single communities. The first grid comprised roads commemorating generals or battles active in British nineteenth-century imperial history. It included roads named after Waterloo, Trafalgar, Alma, Wellington, and Cardigan. Junction Road, an appropriate name, connected this grid to the next. Once again, the street names suggest an intended community. These streets commemorate Anglican heretics active, sometimes burnt, during and after the Reformation: Ridley, Latimer, Cranmer. Deference to the German Luther included him also. The third grid may have had a more piecemeal and opportunistic development, having few houses in 1897 and no apparent naming theme.
Waterloo Road architecture
Waterloo Road still exists, many of its extant buildings perhaps those erected at the century’s end. For the most part, it comprised detached housing. About a quarter of its buildings share identical architecture. The remaining houses, however, vary in size and placement. A walk around the grid’s other streets highlights an overall architectural difference from Waterloo Road. Many of these houses employ rows of identical design. The sizes of the houses comprising each strip differ little from each other. This suggests that the speculators who created Waterloo Road perhaps had a different intent from those shaping the rest of the grid. Economic and social deductions flow from the analysis of house designs. In simple terms, the greater the individuality of structures forming a street, the higher the social elevation of its residents. Social profiling finds that, within the neighbourhood, Waterloo Road had the highest ratio of middling to working people.
Victorian Bournemouth (248): community
1891-1901
In 1891, buildings along Waterloo Road could not have occupied all the available space, for the number of structures had increased by 1901. After that, the number of buildings stayed the same, but their usage changed. At the outset, few unskilled labourers lived on Waterloo Road: two carmen and a gardener. The remaining heads of household consisted of skilled building artisans, a retailer, and two tailors. By 1901, despite more houses, the number of labourers remained unchanged: two gardeners and a porter. Construction artisans still lived here in numbers. The street also contained a Congregational Minister, the manager of a bicycle shop, a retired grocer and another person living on investments. The street now included a Mechanics Club, a large building which occupied a corner plot. Its presence indicates an embryonic community having formed among the skilled workers, the street perhaps the most fitting site within the neighbourhood.
1911-1921
In 1911, the street still housed skilled construction workers. They included new jobs: a gasfitter and a drain tester. Labourers had shrunk to one. The street now housed the manager of a jeweller’s shop and an insurance agent. The Mechanics’ Club still operated. A significant change in tone may lie in the increased proportion of retirees amongst the residents. Changes wrought by the war and its aftermath appear evident on Waterloo Road in 1921. Several of the structures now contained multiple households. The police had closed the Mechanics’ Club in 1915 for illegal sales of alcohol, although it revived. Trades now included a fur cutter, a coal merchant, a linotype operator working for the Bournemouth Echo, two men driving motorised vehicles, and a motorcycle engineer. It bore marks of the war, two men still having naval connections. A police station implies the need for order within the neighbourhood.
Victorian Bournemouth (248): continuity and change
Continuity
Several families resided in Waterloo Road over more than one census. Charles Hunt (1849-1920), a native of Holdenhurst, had arrived in Winton by 1881. A carpenter, later a successful builder, he resided at Bonham, 4 Waterloo Road, from 1891 to 1920. Active early in Winton politics, after Bournemouth absorbed it, he became mayor (1911). The Diamond family, carpenter brothers, occupied 7 Waterloo Road for the same period. The occupants of number 1, a large house, stayed for three decades. The widow ran it as a lodging-house after her husband’s passing. Several other households stayed in place for a maximum of twenty years. The proportion of houses containing longer-term residents increased. In 1911, the majority had already appeared in the previous census or would stay in place for 1921. Over this period, therefore, Waterloo Road emerged as a location of relative social stability, a street whose residents perhaps forged a community.
Short-term
Others dwelt in Waterloo Road for a short time, their names registered by one census. A geographic analysis of their dispersal reflects the growing size and opportunities of Winton. The map shows that, in 1897, most of Winton consisted of the three street grids mentioned. At that time, the area served as a temporary resting place for nomadic workers. Many of those who left Waterloo Road after 1891 or even 1901 tended to leave the Bournemouth area. Thereafter, however, the pattern changes, for those leaving Waterloo Road reappeared elsewhere in Winton. They occupied houses in the new streets built to the west of Wimborne Road. Otherwise, they might head for Springbourne. This signals the civic development of Winton, a consolidation matched by its becoming an Urban District and achieving a measure of collective public authority. Winton had sufficient commercial health to hold those who arrived on speculation.
Takeaway
Victorian Bournemouth (248), using temporal analysis of Bournemouth’s Waterloo Road (1891-1921), highlights a shift from social stability to potential disruption. Initially, the street, perhaps anchored by the presence of eventual mayor Charles Hunt, a carpenter, showed little resident turnover. While the Edwardian period saw a peak in continuity, the post-war era is marked by a policeman’s presence, indicating a possible deterioration of social conditions.
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