Southbourne\u00a0is a suburb of\u00a0Bournemouth. It is the most easterly part of the\u00a0Borough of Bournemouth, situated between Boscombe\u00a0and\u00a0Christchurch. The area was previously known as Stourfield. Strictly, Southbourne refers to the area near to the coast; areas further inland are West Southbourne, Tuckton and\u00a0Wick.<\/p>\n
Around 1766, Edmund Bott built a\u00a0Georgian\u00a0mansion to the east of Pokesdown\u00a0village, commanding views of\u00a0Christchurch Harbour; he named it Stourfield House. One of the most celebrated inhabitants of Stourfield House was\u00a0Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne. Stourfield House later became a care home, looking after servicemen who had been injured in the\u00a0Great War. Today only the front steps survive, leading to a block of flats in Douglas Mews; the steps are marked by a\u00a0Blue Plaque. The original, extended building was demolished in 1990.<\/p>\n
Southbourne also had a short-lived pier. It was constructed in 1888 at a cost of \u00a34,000 and was 300 feet long. There were regular boat-trips between the pier at Southbourne and the pier at Bournemouth. Unfortunately the pier, promenade and nearby sea wall built by Dr. Compton (to rival the resort at Bournemouth) were heavily damaged by storms in December 1900 and January 1901. A buyer for the pier was unable to be found and it was eventually demolished in 1909 due to public safety concerns. On 11 July 1910, Britain\u2019s first international aviation meeting was held on a specially laid out\u00a0aerodrome\u00a0consisting of a mile of grassland between Tuckton and the “Double Dykes” near\u00a0Hengistbury Head. Aviators from around the world competed in a variety of contests, including spot landing, altitude tests, and speed trials (both for the fastest and slowest circuit).\u00a0Charles Stewart Rolls, co-founder of\u00a0Rolls-Royce\u00a0and pioneer\u00a0aviator\u00a0was killed on the second day of the meeting, while attempting a precision landing.\u00a0The event was Britain\u2019s earliest fatal flying accident involving a powered aircraft. Southbourne today is a more relaxed, but still bustling locale for tourists keen to escape the busier areas of Bournemouth town centre, although the number of guest houses in the area has declined in recent years. The main area of Southbourne is Southbourne Grove, a long shopping street that has some unique and individual shops rather than high street chain shops. Another local centre is Southbourne Crossroads, which is further east towards\u00a0Hengistbury Head. Seafield Gardens is a public open space which has, since 2001, won a\u00a0Green Flag Award; it offers various outdoor facilities, including\u00a0bowls\u00a0and\u00a0tennis. It also features a\u00a0watertower. The easternmost part of the area is called\u00a0Hengistbury Head now designated a nature reserve.<\/p>\n Southbourne’s primary attraction is its sandy\u00a0Blue Flag beach, which provides a quieter retreat from the more crowded beach along the coast at Bournemouth.\u00a0Between the cliff top coastal road and the promenade and beach is the\u00a0Fisherman’s Walk Cliff Railway, a\u00a0funicular railway\u00a0that provides very easy access to Southbourne beach, and from where it is possible to reach the beaches at Boscombe and\u00a0Bournemouth.<\/p>\n Courtesy Wikipedia Southbourne Southbourne\u00a0is a suburb of\u00a0Bournemouth. It is the most easterly part of the\u00a0Borough of Bournemouth, situated between Boscombe\u00a0and\u00a0Christchurch. The area was previously known as Stourfield. Strictly, Southbourne refers to the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-371","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chineland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/371"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chineland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chineland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chineland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chineland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=371"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/chineland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":945,"href":"https:\/\/chineland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/371\/revisions\/945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chineland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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