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Bournemouth
Bournemouth shown within Dorset
Population	163,600[1]
OS grid reference	SZ085912
- London	105 miles
Unitary authority	Bournemouth
Ceremonial county	Dorset
Region	South West
Constituent country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	BOURNEMOUTH
Postcode district	BH1 to BH11
Dialling code	01202
Police	Dorset
Fire	Dorset
Ambulance	South Western
UK Parliament	Bournemouth East
	Bournemouth West
European Parliament	South West England
Website: http://www.bournemouth.co.uk
List of places: UK • England • Dorset

Coordinates: 50°43′N 1°53′W / 50.72, -1.88

Bournemouth (pronunciation (help·info)) is a large town and tourist resort, situated on the south coast of England. With a population of 164,000 it is the largest settlement in the ceremonial county of Dorset, and was within the historic boundaries of Hampshire. The town is a regional centre of education and business, and forms the main part of the South East Dorset conurbation, with the adjoining town of Poole. It is also the largest town on the English south coast between Southampton and Plymouth. The town is most notable as the home of the Bournemouth International Centre. The town is also home to several financial companies including JPMorgan Chase, Nationwide Building Society, Liverpool Victoria and Standard Life.

It is often misconceived that the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, The Arts Institute at Bournemouth as well as Bournemouth University have their home in Bournemouth. This is not the case despite the name. These are all actually located in Poole. Bournemouth University and The Arts Institute at Bournemouth are both located in the same place just on the border of Poole and Bournemouth on the Poole side. Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra currently have their home behind the The Lighthouse (Poole) in Poole Town Centre.

In a recent survey by First Direct Bank, Bournemouth was found to be the happiest place in Britain with 82% of people questioned saying they were happy with their life.^[2]

Contents 1 Geography 2 Literature references 3 Climate and tourism 4 History 5 Culture and recreation 5.1 Gardens and Sport 5.2 Shopping 5.3 Nightlife 5.4 Bournemouth Literary Festival 5.5 Bournemouth Air Festival 6 Education 7 Economy 8 Transport 9 Wildlife 10 Naming Conventions 11 References 12 See also 13 External links

Bournemouth is located about 105 miles southwest of London at 50.72° N 1.88° W.

Bournemouth is in Hardy country, and appears as Sandbourne in Thomas Hardy's novels. Tess lived in Sandbourne with Alec d'Urberville, and the town also features in The Well-Beloved and Jude the Obscure. Bournemouth is also mentioned in So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish, the fourth book of the inaccurately named Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, in which a large robot comes to earth and spends a week lying on the beach in Bournemouth face down. In James Herbert's horror novel The Fog, the entire population of Bournemouth runs into the sea and drowns in a mass suicide. It is also mentioned in Roald Dahl's The Witches, where the hotel is located.

Another famous resident is Gordon Irving, Author of the 2004 best selling novel, 'The Jacobites' set in 1980's Bournemouth.

Apparently J. R. R. Tolkien spent 30 years taking holidays in Bournemouth, staying in the same room at the Hotel Miramar, with a second room to write in. He retired to nearby Poole.

Mary Shelley is buried in St. Peter's Church, her son Sir Percy having settled at Boscombe Manor. Also buried at St Peter's is the heart of Mary's husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, brought back from Italy, and her parents William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, their remains having been moved there from Old St Pancras Church.

Bournemouth's climate is great!

Main article: History of Bournemouth

The area surrounding Bournemouth has been the site of human settlement for thousands of years. In 1800 the area was largely a remote and barren heathland. No-one lived at Bourne Mouth and the only regular visitors were a few fishermen, turf cutters and gangs of smugglers who landed their cargoes of spirits, tea and tobacco on the deserted beach.

The area had once been a hunting estate, 'Stourfield Chase', but by the late 18th century only a few small parts of it were maintained, including several fields around the Bourne Stream and a cottage known as Decoy Pond House, which stood near where The Square is today.

Generally, until 1802 the area was common land. The Christchurch Inclosures Act 1802 and the Inclosure Commissioners' Award of 1805 transferred hundreds of acres into private ownership for the first time.

In 1809, the Tapps Arms public house appeared on the heath. In 1812 the first residents, retired army officer Lewis Tregonwell and his wife, moved into their new home, built on land he had purchased from Sir George Ivison Tapps.

First Tregonwell and later Tapps began developing the settlement for holiday letting. They planted pine trees, providing a sheltered walk to the beach. The town would ultimately grow up around its scattered pines. Twenty-five years after the Tregonwells started work on their holiday mansion, Bournemouth was still a small community with a scattering of houses and cottages.

In 1835, after the death of Sir George Ivison Tapps, his son Sir George William Tapps-Gervis inherited his father's estate and started developing the seaside village into a resort similar to those that had already grown up along the south coast such as Weymouth and Brighton.

In 1841, there were still only a few hundred people living in Bournemouth, but that year saw the town visited by the physician Augustus Bozzi Granville. Granvilla was the author of The Spas of England, which described health resorts around the country. As a result of his visit, Dr Granville included a chapter on Bournemouth in the second edition of his book. It was this more than anything that put the town on the map as the perfect place for people with health problems, especially chest complaints, which were common in the 19th century. Bournemouth quickly became a destination for affluent holiday-makers and for invalids in search of 'the sea air'. In the 1840s the fields south of the road crossing (later The Square) were drained and laid out with shrubberies and walks.

In 1856, Parliament approved the Bournemouth Improvement Act. Under the Act, a board of 13 Commissioners was established to organise all the things involved in the running of a small but growing town, such as paving, sewers, drainage, street lighting and street cleaning.

By the 1860s the fields to the north were also laid out with walks by the owners of the Branksome Estate. In the early 1870s all the fields were leased to the Bournemouth Commissioners by the freeholders. These fields now form The Pleasure Gardens, which run through the centre of the town. The area continued to develop along with the railways and the popular idea of visiting the seaside for holidays. Among the people who contributed to the development of Bournemouth at this time were Sir Percy Florence Shelley (son of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley) and Sir Merton Russell-Cotes.

In 1880, the town had a population of 17,000 people. By 1900 this had risen to 60,000, and by 1990 it had more than doubled again, reaching 150,000. In the latest census, the town had a population of 163,441. Since the 1990s there have been increasing calls for the town, together with Poole, to attain official city status (as per the example of Brighton & Hove) due to its sheer expanse and regional importance.

The town is an important venue for major conferences, with the Bournemouth International Centre (BIC), which stands on the cliff-tops near the middle of the town overlooking the sea and the pier, often hosting the annual conferences of the main national political parties amongst its events. The BIC also hosts theatrical productions and concerts.

The Russell-Cotes Museum is located just to the east of the Central Gardens near to the Pavilion Theatre and next to the Royal Bath Hotel. The museum includes many fine mostly 19th century paintings and the family collections acquired when travelling e.g in Japan and Russia. It was Sir Merton Russell Cotes, one of Bournemouth's most prominent Victorians, who successfully campaigned to have a promenade built; it runs continuously along the Bournemouth and Poole shoreline.

The Royal Bath Hotel, located near the sea and just to the east of the Central Gardens, has attracted many important visitors over the years, including Oscar Wilde, H. G. Wells, Richard Harris, Sir Thomas Beecham, Shirley Bassey, and prime ministers Lord Beaconsfield (who stayed for three months to help his gout), Gladstone, Asquith and Lloyd George. Royal guests have been Edward VII and Edward VIII when each was the Prince of Wales, George VI when he was the Duke of York, Queen Wilhemina of the Netherlands and Empress Eugenie of France.

Recently, Bournemouth has become the venue of the Professional Darts Championship "The Premier Legue". It is hosted at the Bournemouth International centre and has received much acclaimation by the fans as 2006, Raymond Van Barneveld hit a '9 darter' against 'one dart' Peter Manley. It was hotly rated as one of the favourites to become the new host for the PDC World Championships as the last site, Circus Tavern, could not hold the growing numbers of fans.

Bournemouth is also the hometown of the popular hair metal band "Snakefrenzy". Their songs "Rock & Roll Bournemouth" and "Snakebite" make reference to the town.

Bournemouth award winning Central Gardens are a separate major public park, leading for several miles down the valley of the River Bourne through the centre of the town to the sea (reaching the sea at Bournemouth Pier) and include the Pleasure Gardens and the area surrounding the Pavilion and the IMAX cinema.

The town also plays host to professional football club, AFC Bournemouth, currently playing in League One and to Bournemouth F.C. who play in the Wessex League Premier Division. AFC Bournemouth play at the Fitness First Stadium near Boscombe in Kings' Park, about two miles east of the town centre. Bournemouth Gasworks Athletic F.C. were a non-league side much closer to the town centre, though lacked support and went bankrupt recently.

Bournemouth Rugby Club, currently in South West Division One, has its home at the Bournemouth Sports Club located next to Hurn Airport. As well as an expanding seniors section the club also has a very large youth and mini section.

Bournemouth Cricket Club situated next to Bournemouth International Airport is one of Dorset's premier cricket clubs. Their 1st team play in the Southern Premier League and have thriving youth section

The main shopping streets in the centre of town are just behind the seafront.

Drinking alcohol outside in public in Bournemouth is not allowed. St. Peter's Road and Fir Vale Road (one which has several large clubs/bars on it including Toko, Bliss and Elements) is closed after 10pm on Friday and Saturday evenings with large gates stopping local traffic driving down it. Only taxis picking people up are permitted to drive down the road.

Bournemouth has had an annual Literary Festival since 2005. Themes for 2007 are Romance, Love and Erotic Fiction. Events are held throughout the year. 2008 theme is international and will include film, dance and theatre.

Bournemouth Air Festival was launched on the 10th of August 2007 and will be a four day event at the end of the summer of 2008. The show will be centred on the Red Arrows with displays also from Lancasters, Hurricanes and Spitfires. The event will be held through the dates from the 28th-31st August 2008.

Bournemouth's education is rubbish!

This is a chart of trend of regional gross value added of Bournemouth and Poole at current basic prices published (pp. 240-253) by Office for National Statistics with figures in millions of British Pounds Sterling.

With the growth of Bournemouth in recent years, traffic has increased dramatically.^{[citation needed]} The conurbation of Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch shows increasing traffic congestion and the roads are often busy.

The Bournemouth area has long been a place wherein many unusual species of animals and plants can be found. Brownsea island, in nearby Poole Harbour, is one of the few places in the south where the red squirrel still remains, and the ant Formica pratensis had its last stronghold in the area, although it is now thought to be extinct on the mainland. Although described by Farren White as "the common wood ant of Bournemouth" in the mid-19th century, the noted entomologist Horace Donisthorpe found only one colony of true pratensis out of hundreds of F. rufa nests there in 1906. In recent times the last known two colonies disappeared in the 1980s, making this ant the only ant species thought to have become extinct in Great Britain. It does, however, still survive on cliff-top locations in the Channel Islands. The rare narrow-headed ant also used to exist in Bournemouth, although it has died out in the area.

The word 'Bournemouth' is often used (erroneously) to describe the South East Dorset conurbation, which also contains neighbouring towns of Poole, Christchurch, Wimborne Minster, Verwood, Ringwood and New Milton. As a result, the following misnomers have come to exist:

• "Bournemouth University" has its main campus located in Poole, on the boundary with Bournemouth.
• "Bournemouth International Airport" is located near Hurn in the borough of Christchurch, and was originally named Hurn Airport.
• "Bournemouth Bay" is a common misnomer for Poole Bay.
• The "Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra" recently moved to Poole.

• List of Dorset beaches
• List of Bournemouth schools

• Bournemouth Community Website
• Official Bournemouth Borough Council information site
• Official Bournemouth tourist information site
• Bournemouth history in photos
• Bournemouth language schools
• A nightguide for Bournemouth
• Bournemouth Literary Festival