Southbourne, one and a half miles south-west of Christchurch, will soon become a mere outer suburb of Bournemouth. It almost touches Boscombe, that eastern extension of the great town that has sprung into being within the last fifty years. Southbourne is said to be bracing; it is certainly a great contrast to the bustle and glitter of its great neighbour. There is a kind of snobbishness that strikes to decry any large or popular resort, seemingly because it is large and popular, but surely there must be some virtue in these huge watering places that attract so many year after year, and if Southbourne pleases only Tom, and Bournemouth Dick and Harry and their friends, well, good health to them! That their favourite town does not start off a new chapter may offend the latter, but they will perhaps admit that although it is on the west side of the Avon the town among the pines forms, with its sandy chines and the trees that gave it its first claim to popular favour, an extension and outlier of the great series of heath and woodland that has just been traversed and that it makes a fitting geographical termination to south-western Hants.
Though the pines themselves have not been planted much longer than a hundred years, they now appear as the only relics of a lonely and rather bare tract of uncultivable desert. Local historians claim that the beginnings of Bournemouth were made in 1810, but it would appear that only two or three houses existed by the lonely wastes of sand in the first few years of the Victorian era. One of these was an adjunct to a decoy pond for wild fowl. The parish itself was not formed until 1894, and although fashionable streets and fine churches and a super-excellent "Winter-garden" had been erected when the writer first saw the town, not much more than twenty years ago, the front was extremely "raw" and the only shelter during a shower was a large tent on the sands that, on one never-to-be-forgotten occasion, collapsed during a squall upon the crowd of lightly-clad holiday-makers beneath. But this is a very dim and distant past for Bournemouth, the "Sandbourne" of the Wessex novels. The town is now as well conducted as any on the English coast. It is large enough and has a sufficient permanent population to justify its inclusion in the ranks of the county boroughs. It is becoming almost as popular as Ventnor with those who suffer from weak lungs, though it can be very cold here in January.
Bournemouth will be found a convenient centre, or rather starting point, for the exploration of the beautiful Wessex coast. From the pier large and comfortable steamers make the passage to Swanage, Weymouth, Lyme and further afield. Another advantage which these large towns have for the ordinary tourist is that he may generally count upon getting some sort of roof to cover him when in the smaller coast resorts lodgings are not merely at a premium but simply unobtainable at any price.
POOLE, WIMBORNE AND THE ISLE OF PURBECK