Westbourne’s Victorian Arcade
Westbourne is a residential and shopping area of Bournemouth. It is located about a quarter of a mile north of Alum & Branksome Dene Chines. This small town is, as many small towns in the area, referred to as a village.
Westbourne has become a fashionable and popular part of Bournemouth with an eclectic mix of clothing shops, cafés, restaurants and many other independent businesses. Westbourne has a reputation for being the fashion district of Bournemouth, which is supported by the many boutiques and home interior shops located in the main shopping area. The main high street of Westbourne includes a Victorian covered shopping arcade. There are several international language schools in Westbourne.
St Tesco’s – open all day Sunday.
The Grand Cinema building
Skerryvore
Until it was closed in 1965, Westbourne had a train station known as Bournemouth West Station Terminus. The station was often very busy during the summer seasons, as it was a main disembarkation point for holidaymakers to Poole and Bournemouth and nearby Branksome Dean Chine and it was on a bridge (now gone) across this chine from which Winstone Churchill fell when he was a child, breaking both legs and damaging his kidneys. Robert Louis Stevenson was Westbourne’s most famous resident who lived at ‘Skerryvore’ on Alum Chine Road between 1885 and 1887 writing Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as well as part of Treasure Island while he was recovering from an illness. It is also here that John Singer Sergeant painted R.L.Stevenson pacing his drawing room with his wife sat by in 1885 and a novel of his life whilst residing in Westbourne (published in 1929 titled ‘R.L.S and his Sine Qua Non’) was written by Adelaide A. Boodle. There is now a small statue commemorating his work on the site of the ruins of the house he lived in, which was destroyed in the Second World War. Also the road opposite where ‘Skerryvore’ stood is now appropriately named R.S. Stevenson Avenue. Florence Nightingale had an interest in Westbourne when in 1867 she was a prime mover in the building of the Herbert Home Hospital.
Courtesy Wikipedia
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Westbourne remains one of Bournemouth’s premier shopping areas with it unique mix of shops, café’s and bars. If you are bored with the carbon copy high street seeing the same shops wherever you go you will be refreshed by a shopping area where independent businesses outnumber the chains. Hard to find businesses like the traditional hardware shop or independent book shop can easily be found in Westbourne. Often referred to as the fashion district of Bournemouth, Westbourne has many fashion boutiques, interior and furniture shops.
Just to the west of Westbourne is ‘County Gates’ the historic crossing point between the shire counties of Dorset and Hampshire. On April 1, 1974 when Bournemouth and Christchurch were incorporated into Dorset, it became the main crossing point between the Borough of Poole and the Borough of Bournemouth. County Gates sits on the A35 road and today is a busy gyratory . In the centre of the roundabout is the Liverpool Victoria (LV) head quarters. The roundabout feeds to and from Poole Road (A35), Wessex Way (A338), Lindsay Road and The Avenue which leads to BranksomePark, Canford Cliffs and Sandbanks, and Seamoor Road which leads into Westbourne.
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