Archive for the ‘Dorset’ Category

Shipping Containers for sale in Poole Dorset

Estimated Population: 144,800

Poole was a small fishing village at the time of the Norman Conquest, but grew rapidly into an important port exporting wool and in 1433 was made Port of the Staple. By then the town had trade links from the Baltic to Spain. However, in 1405 the Spanish burnt Poole to the ground because Harry Paye kept attacking Spanish vessels. Around this time, the town was made a county corporate. In the 17th century transatlantic trade and travel developed and at the start of the 18th century Poole was beating rival Bristol as the busiest port in England. The town grew rapidly during the industrial revolution as urbanisation took place, and the merchants put up tenement buildings (mostly demolished in the 1960s).

At the turn of the 19th century 9 out of 10 workers in Poole were engaged in harbour activities but as the century progressed ships became too large for the shallow harbour and the port began losing business to the deepwater ports at Liverpool, Southampton and Plymouth.

In the 19th century the beaches and landscape of south west Hampshire and the Isle of Purbeck district of Dorset began to attract large numbers of tourists and the village of Bournemouth, five miles east of Poole, grew as a holiday town. Growth accelerated and Poole and Bournemouth have become a single conurbation, though Poole remains the more industrial part of the conurbation.

Shipping Containers for sale in Poole Dorset

Shipping Containers for sale in Bournemouth Dorset

Estimated Population: 139,403

Bournemouth barely existed at the start of the 19th century. When retired army officer Lewis Tregonwell visited in 1810, he found only a bridge crossing a small stream at the head of an unspoilt valley. An inn had recently been built at what is now The Square (centre of Bournemouth), catering both for travellers and for the smugglers who lurked in the area at night. Captain Tregonwell and his wife were so impressed by the area that they bought several acres and built a home, which is today part of the Royal Exeter Hotel. Tregonwell also planted pine trees, providing a sheltered walk to the beach. The town was to grow up around its scattered pines.

Bournemouth quickly became a destination for affluent holiday-makers and for invalids in search of the sea air. In the 1860s, meadows either side of the Bourne stream were turned into the town’s Central Gardens. The immaculately tended gardens are still much-loved and the Central Gardens contain the town’s impressive war memorial, guarded by four stone lions.

A large sanatorium, overlooking the Central Gardens, treated patients with chest diseases. It has recently been re-developed as Brompton Court, a complex of retirement homes, preserving its remarkable chapel. Next to the sanatorium was built the magnificent Mont Dore Hotel, which is now the Town Hall. In the hotel’s heyday in the 1880s it was renowned nationally and internationally for its sumptuous luxury which included possessing one of the first telephones in England - the number was “3″. century, developing a wool and cotton weaving tradition. The urbanisation and development of Bolton largely coincided with the introduction of textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution. It was a boomtown of the 19th century and, at its zenith in 1929, 216 cotton mills and 26 bleaching and dying works, made it one of the largest and most productive centres of cotton spinning in the world. After World War I the British cotton industry declined sharply and by the 1980s cotton manufacture had virtually ceased in Bolton.

Shipping Containers for sale in Bournemouth Dorset