Boscombe possesses her own group of gardens and open spaces. Boscombe Chine Gardens extend from the Christchurch Road to the mouth of the Chine. At the shore end is an artificial pond where the juvenile natives meet the youthful visitors for the purpose of sailing toy ships. The Knyveton Gardens lie in the valley between Southcote Road and Knyveton Road, and cover some five acres of land. King's Park, and the larger Queen's Park, together with Carnarvon Crescent Gardens, show that Boscombe attaches as much importance as Bournemouth to the advantages of providing her visitors and residents with an abundance of open spaces, tastefully laid out, and having, in some cases, tennis courts and bowling greens.
The piers of both Bournemouth and Boscombe are great centres of attraction for visitors, apart from those who only use them for the purpose of reaching the many steamboats that ply up and down the coast. A landing pier of wood, eight hundred feet long and sixteen feet in width, was opened on 17th September, 1861. It cost the modest sum of £4000. During the winter of 1865-6 many of the wooden piles were found to have rotted, and were replaced by iron piles. A considerable portion of the pier was treated in a similar manner in 1866, and again in 1868. With this composite and unsightly structure Bournemouth was content until 1878, when the present pier was commenced, being formally opened in 1880. It was extended in 1894, and again in 1909. Boscombe Pier, as already stated, was opened in 1889 by the then Duke of Argyll.
BOURNEMOUTH: THE CHILDREN'S CORNER, LOWER GARDENS
Owing to their proximity to the Pier and the shore, these Gardens are much frequented by the people and afford great delight to children.
Of Bournemouth's many modern churches that of St. Peter, situated at the junction of the Gervis and the Hinton Roads, has interesting historical associations, apart from its architectural appeal.
In the south transept John Keble used to sit during his prolonged stay at Bournemouth in the closing years of his life. He is commemorated by the "Keble Windows", and the "Keble Chapel", within the church, and by a metal tablet affixed to the house "Brookside", near the pier, where he passed away in 1866. The churchyard is extremely pretty, being situated on a well-wooded hillside. The churchyard cross was put up in July, 1871. In the churchyard are buried the widow of the poet Shelley, together with her father, Godwin the novelist, and her mother, who was also a writer of some distinction. Taken altogether, this church, with its splendid windows and richly-wrought reredos and screens, is one of the most pleasing modern churches in the country, both with regard to its architecture and its delightful situation.
This hillside churchyard under the pine trees, together with "Brookside", where Keble lived, and Boscombe Manor, with its memories of the Shelleys, are the only literary shrines Bournemouth as yet possesses.
Mary Godwin, whose maiden name was Wollstonecraft, was an Irish girl who became literary adviser to Johnson, the publisher, by whom she was introduced to many literary people, including William Godwin, whom she married in 1797. Their daughter Mary, whose birth she did not survive, became the poet Shelley's second wife. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was one of the earliest writers on woman's suffrage, and her Vindications of the Rights of Women was much criticized on account of, to that age, the advanced views it advocated. Among her other books was a volume of Original Stories for Children, illustrated by William Blake.