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West Moors
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| ... LOSS OF MAIN-LINE TRAFFIC 1893: The change of service pattern following full implementation of the 'Bournemouth Direct' and Holes Bay cut-off routing in the spring of 1893 would of course been evident to the station staff at West Moors but it is a moot point whether the wider community would have been significantly affected. For one thing, the local population of the 'greater' West Moors area (roughly corresponding to the map below) was still tiny at this time; conservatively I would put the figure at around 250 (~50 dwellings, still as well scattered as they were forty or more years previously) and even if you include areas of Hampreston and West Parley parishes that might consider the Junction as their 'natural' rail-head, I doubt the number would be more than 350 (it would grow to ~1500 by the end of this chapter - circa 1923 - a five-fold increase). |
| This map (below) is a rough sketch to portray the approximate
distribution of habitable dwellings as the last decade of the nineteenth
century dawned and prior to the first major 'pulse' of building development in
the late Victorian & early Edwardian eras. It is based on old maps of the
time and cross-checked against the census return of 1891; however, no doubt
there will be errors in precise location, attribution etc., so treat as a guide
only. It is clear that, compared to the middle of the 19th century, there is now a 'clustering' of habitation around the railway junction and its station and there are more dwellings around Revel's Crossing (north of West Moors), which at this time are nominally accounted as part of that hamlet, but which would in the future be taken to be part of Three Legged Cross (or Three Cross) and become part of Verwood civil parish (CP). |
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| The growth, albeit slow, of dwellings between Trickett's Cross and
'Fern Down' can also be seen - and these will become part of Ferndown in the
new century to come. At the Ringwood Road end of what is now Pinehurst Road,
only St. Leonard's Farm is shown. It will be several decades before development
starts here. The school shown is the 1859 building, not to be confused with the
current (1896) building which I am led to believe was built a little to the
south of this (1859) position. [ From this point in this publication, I shall concentrate on developments within the modern 'civil parish' of West Moors only, unless there are major impacts on the railway history of the village. ] |
| These two diagrams attempt to show how the passenger traffic pattern changed once the full implementation of the changes in the latter part of the 19th century settled down. |
| The top diagram represents broadly the situation up to
the opening of the Sway link from Brockenhurst to Christchurch: the 'main line'
(Route 1) was much as it had been in 1847 on the opening of the original
Southampton & Dorchester Railway. Route 2 was the link from Ringwood
down to Christchurch then terminating at Bournemouth (East): passengers changed
trains at Ringwood (under a fine covered shed over the appropriate platform)
and endured a rather leisurely, meandering journey to the developing resort;
however, there were also 'through carriages' on some trains from London which
were detached at Ringwood and worked down the branch. Salisbury & Dorset
Junction trains (Route 3) were principally intended for Wimborne,
Dorchester & Weymouth: passengers for Poole & Bournemouth were expected
to change trains at Wimborne or Broadstone Junction (earlier named Poole
Junction or variants in like fashion). Finally, Route 4 shows the
Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway services to/from Bath (and thence the
Midlands), to Bournemouth (West). Jump forward 30-odd years, and the traffic pattern is very different. Route 1, the 'main line' is now, as today, routed through Bournemouth (Central, earlier East) & Poole and on to Dorchester & Weymouth. This means that the 'Old Road' (Route 2) is essentially a country railway performing the functions of a branch line, but utilising 'main-line', double-track standards! The services now terminate (for the most part) at Bournemouth (West), as are the services off the 'Salisbury' line (Route 3) - now firmly rooted (routed?) in that still growing resort: there were also 'short-workings' from Wimborne to both Bournemouth stations & the odd journey (including postal services) ran right through from Waterloo to Dorchester and/or Weymouth via the 'Old Road'. The unchanging pattern is that of the Somerset and Dorset Joint (Route 4), adding to the bustle at the West station, though some of these latter will of course be timetabled to terminate at Central. Finally, long bypassed at this date, the old Ringwood & Christchurch line (Route 5) is now very much a single-line branch with little purpose, with push-pull shuttling between Ringwood, Christchurch & Bournemouth (Central) - this line will stagger on until 1935 then be shut-down completely. [Key: WH=Wareham; HJ=Hamworthy Junction; P=Poole; B(W)=Bournemouth (West); B(E)/B(C)=Bournemouth (East, later Central); C=Christchurch; B=Brockenhurst; R=Ringwood Junction; WMJ=West Moors Junction; W=Wimborne Minster; BJ=Broadstone Junction] |
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| ... AT THE RAILWAY STATION: A small waiting room (more like a waiting cabin) was constructed on the 'down' (i.e. Wimborne & Bournemouth-bound) platform in 1898: this reflected the growing importance of services in that direction - particularly with the first signs of building work in the village (see elsewhere). Facilities were spartan though (and remained so throughout the life of the station), but in 1902, a reinforced concrete footbridge was imported from Germany and erected adjacent to the level crossing to allow passengers to cross the line safely - it can be seen in the photograph reproduced below which is dated to the first decade of the 20th century; previously passengers would, as was customary at some little-used stations elsewhere, cross 'on the level' from one end of the platform to the opposite side and the provision of this facility tells us something about the increase of passengers using the railway. [ The use of concrete at this time was quite novel - no one in Britain was able to supply the item at the time, but the Southern Railway in later years used concrete extensively in its structures, produced in its own workshops.] From 1866, when the junction was built, control of traffic was by means of a signal cabin, later a signal box situated alongside the junction (and conveniently close to the railway cottages). However, in 1904, to save the staff costs associated with having staff opening/closing the gates on Station Road, the signal box was moved to the road end of the up (London / Salisbury-bound) platform. This would have been somewhat more convenient for exchanging the tokens on the line to Salisbury as well. By this time, I suspect that the Crossing Lodge, although still in railway ownership, would have been used to house retired railway workers, though they in turn would have taken in lodgers off the railway. |
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It is worth emphasising just how busy the station (and of
course its signal box) was as regards train movements: in addition to around
two-dozen passenger train movements (all lines / both directions), there were
regular twice or thrice daily goods trains & some through trains as well.
The Station Road level crossing was well used - needing to be opened around 30
times in hours between 4.30 am and late evening. [If you've ever complained
about traffic along Station Road, remember 80 years ago it would have been the
railway providing the interruptions to movement!] I stated earlier that the station staff would have noticed the changed traffic pattern in the early 1890s, but the change would also have been welcomed by the occupants of both the railway cottages and the crossing lodge: they were both built only a few feet from the running lines: I have 10 ft for the cottages, and the crossing lodge was even closer, and the rumble of trains must have been deafening - and vibration most disturbing. With the main-line traffic moved to Bournemouth, the late evening/early hours 'Mail' train followed that route - and the residents of these railway houses could at least get a little sleep after the last movement of the evening and before the 'paper' train came down the Salisbury line around 5 o'clock. |
| ... and of course the Station Master wasn't too far away from the running lines and he, and his family's life, would be governed by the movement of trains - the goings and comings of passengers and traders and the day-to-day ups and downs. The man appointed to such a post at this time would bear a heavy responsibility - but he would also have the respect of the wider community. James Hallett took on the task around 1883, after the early death of Henry Fenton. Mr. Hallett would see the station into the twentieth century, handing over to Henry Martin early in the reign of King Edward. He was succeeded in turn by Alfred Foster before the first decade of the new century was complete. After him Frederick Denness and T.F. Wright completed the roster until the time of the 'grouping' in 1923. |
| This map shows the area immediately around the station in
1901 (roughly - detailed surveys wouldn't necessarily have been performed on
all aspects to a specific year: I suspect some elements are in fact for a few
years earlier). Points to note: the new 'Railway Hotel', but the older Railway Inn (not labelled) is still shown on the corner of what would become Ashurst Road: note that this latter doesn't actually exist at this time - the track shown just to the north of the old smithy/Inn was simply that - to access the cottages shown. Ashurst Road would strike parallel with the railway, just north of the old Inn. Note the 'PO' as part of the Railway Cottages (Florence Larcombe) and the Signal Box opposite the junction - it would move in December 1904 to be adjacent to the crossing. Also, the 'up-side' goods siding runs off the main (Ringwood-Wimborne) line: around 1910/1911, the siding was altered such that it ran off the Salisbury line - this both lengthened the siding and removed conflict with the main (though by now subsidiary) line. A letter box ('LB') is shown by the crossing. Note the number of wells ('W') shown - the primary source of water until piped water reached the village around 1907. |
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| Elsewhere, in 1913 (operational October 9th), a small cabin was built
on the east side of Newman's Lane Crossing (the railway didn't use the
apostrophe, by the way) on the Salisbury line, immediately 'down-line' of the
gates, to house the ground-frame that controlled the gate release and
associated train signals. According to George Pryer ('Signal box diagrams of
the GWR & SR, Volume 2' as quoted in "The Salisbury & Dorset
Junction Railway/Nigel Bray/2010"), there were 'distant' and 'home'
signals to protect the crossing (by now getting much busier than when the line
originally opened in 1866) with a Relay Bell to warn the keeper of approaching
trains (from West Moors or Verwood). Whether the Newman's Lane crossing lodge
is in 'formal' use as residence for a crossing keeper is not clear, but later
writers note that a railway family living in the Lodge, who's mother was the
'crossing keeper', sent children to the school in the village during the 1920s
at least, so I suspect that the house was still in use as a railway residence.
The gates were, as they always had been, hand-operated. This gate had two allocated crossing-keepers (nominally a husband and wife 'team'), but Revel's & Dolman's Crossings elsewhere had only one (resident) keeper. This might seem odd (only one keeper), but unlike Newman's Lane, which at this date, had gates shut across the railway until a train was due, Revel's and Dolman's had much lighter traffic demands, being almost of the 'Accommodation' status, i.e., the gates would only need to be opened for cross-railway traffic irregularly and infrequently - farm traffic, passage of milking cows, service vehicles etc. Incidentally, the Station Master at West Moors had the supervision of all three crossings under his care until closure of the station in the 1960s. When gas arrived in the village, around 1911, this enabled the lamps at the station to be converted getting rid of the oil lamps: gas lamps would remain the principal means of platform lighting until closure in 1964. [ Of passing interest, until street lighting was installed in the village in the second half of the century, the gas lamp by the signal box was the only light on Station Road - apparently a 'gathering-place' for the youths of the village in the 1920s and 1930s.] |
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Although this image isn't at West Moors (it is actually
elsewhere on the LSWR network - Bude, North Cornwall), it could have been - and
the engine, along with other members of the T1 'fleet' almost certainly passed
along the line at some time. It is typical of the type of compact but powerful
tank engine that was used on the line for local journeys, short goods workings
etc. The locomotive is immaculate and the drivers and firemen are obviously
proud of their charge. This view was taken around 1923, possibly to mark the
demise, after 90 years, of this long-established company and its absorption
into the Southern Railway. The engine is a type 'T1' designed by William Adams (then Locomotive Superintendent of the LSWR) in 1888. They lived a long and useful life (together with Adam's later type 'O2' and Drummond's 'M7' - this latter being essentially a larger, more powerful version of Adam's T1). The last T1s were not withdrawn until about 1950. |
| ... RAILWAY OPERATIONS: There was considerable freight traffic on both the Salisbury & 'Old Road' lines right through this period - not only locally generated, but passing through from elsewhere; the railway station and its goods yard was the de-facto centre of the community. Indeed, in 1910/11, the 'up' siding (which terminated in the goods yard behind the station) was reconnected such that its points were in the Salisbury line, rather than the Ringwood track. This had the effect of lengthening the siding allowing longer goods rakes to use it. These two diagrams illustrate the change and demonstrate the additional flexibility offered during shunting movements - an additional 'berthing' siding has also been added. |
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| There was no subsidy for the railways, but then traffic levels were
high with as yet very limited competition from road transport. What mechanised
road transport available actually helped the railways to deliver goods
services, by feeding into/out of the local railway stations. Long distance road
haulage was not viable as yet: the vehicles were unreliable and roads poorly
maintained away from the 'trunk' network, especially pre-Great War. The passage
of goods trains with around 25 or more wagons was not uncommon - with up to
three guards/brake vans, depending upon the make-up of the rake of loaded
wagons, the number of 'major' splits along the route etc. One train that arrived in West Moors around 5 am was the ubiquitous 'paper train', bringing the latest 'London' news down the Salisbury line. Much as our papers arrive today (though delivered by courier), the newspapers were gathered into bundled packets and were the responsibility of the train guard: the door of the brake van slid open - the papers slung out onto the platform ready for transfer to the booking office - whence local newsagents would collect; given that West Moors (on either platform) never did have any shelter, there must have been mornings when the papers got jolly wet! Post of course was brought by rail - there has been a sub-post office of sorts in West Moors since at least the 1880s, but the railway also carried its own parcels / small goods traffic, at first conveyed in vans attached to timetabled public services, but as this was increasingly frowned upon, there were routine, time-tabled 'goods-only' services as well. The Salisbury line had, around the beginning of the twentieth century, two 'pick-up' goods trains in each direction, with similar services running between Eastleigh, Southampton in the east and Poole, Bournemouth, Dorchester & Weymouth in the west. And as already mentioned, you could order items from catalogues to be delivered to the local railway station - this service would be available until the early 1960s. The Royal Mail (General Post Office or GPO) relied upon the railway network for its 'backbone' service, a situation that did not change until the 1980s. The established pattern of service was that the overnight mail train (travelling post office / TPO) would run down from Waterloo, accepting / delivering mail en-route, and mail for our part of the world was dropped off in pre-sorted bags at Brockenhurst before the train went on its way to Bournemouth, Poole, Dorchester and Weymouth. The local mail bags were then loaded onto the first westbound train of the day, and deposited at West Moors, where local postal staff collected it and took it to the PO (Railway cottages until early 20th century, then Moorlands Road for a short time around and just after the turn of the century, then Station Road - Florence Larcombe being the postmistress until well after the Great War - latterly Florence Tilsed***), where it was sorted into 'walks' for the local postmen: the mail for Ferndown was collected by van. Mail posted in London the previous afternoon was delivered around breakfast time the next day; the combination of a cheap, efficient GPO packet and parcel service, alongside the railway's own small-packet / casual goods service enabled small businesses / shops in the local area to cater for customer's needs with ease. It is, I think, no exaggeration to state that the combination of the railway, the postal service and the telegraph network were the three essential ingredients that both opened up the country to wider (and broadly better) influences, and also bound the nation together: and of the three, the railway provided the 'backbone' - without that the other two either wouldn't have developed as they did, or not at all. [*** Florence Larcombe was the eldest of three daughters from the second marriage of Thomas Larcombe, with Mary Woolford: Thomas was a signalman on the railway, living in the railway cottages near the junction; Florence was born around 1875 and in the 1898 Kelly's listing she is a coal merchant operating out of the railway goods yard - aged 23. In the year 1903, she is 28 and as yet unmarried. By 1915 though (age 40) she is listed as Mrs. Florence Tilsed - so she got her man - Hedley Bertie Tilsed (a tailor), with the marriage taking place in 1914. He was 6 years younger than Florence. She was obviously a canny lady! (shades of 'Lark Rise')] |
| The period from the end of the 19th century to the 1920s saw much
improved facilities on Britain's railways for 'ordinary' passengers. On-train
toilet facilities, though not universal, were becoming more common - corridor
trains on some services were offered, though low-usage, local services (such as
would have been offered on many trains in rural Dorset) still had carriages
with compartments with no inter-connecting; lighting was mostly electrical,
emergency cords generally available, seating improved and with a settled
pattern of track maintenance & improved coupling of wagons, the 'ride' was
smoother. One big change for the travelling public occurred in 1918; the L&SWR decided to follow where other railway companys had already gone, and abolished 2nd Class compartments. The move was begun in the latter part of the previous century, triggered by commercial decisions of the Midland Railway. Other railways (reluctantly) followed suit. In practice, "FIRST" and "SECOND" were merged (the compartments of the latter being re-labelled) and fares for "FIRST" were reduced slightly - thus reducing overall income, hence the reluctance on the part of management. [ This situation, 'First' and 'Third' classes of travel, lasted until 1956, when British Railways renamed 'Third' as 'Second', and of course in recent times, the latter is now 'Standard' class. ] Other improvements were not evident to the passenger, but were of vital importance. Through a combination of technical development, legislative coercion and operating necessity, Britain's railways had procedures in place at the start of the 20th century that made them as safe as they would be until the advent of digital/electronic monitoring and control in the last third of that century. Signalling & control using the block system of traffic control was now universal - and on single-lines (such as the Salisbury line), token-control was an additional safeguard. Engines were more powerful, even for local services and small things (to the outsider) like couplings, axle-bearings, wheel design & construction, rail mountings, track maintenance etc., had improved beyond measure. It is no accident that the railways of this nation during the 'Edwardian' era were used as a template throughout the rest of the British-influenced world. And by the end of the 19th century, the locomotive colours were changing from the long-established 'brown' variants to something that would become more typical of the successor Southern Railway: by the turn of the century, the dominant colour was green - Adams' engines (William Adams CMEng 1878 - 1895) were always outshopped (at least for passenger working) in a variant of green, typically 'Sage Green', a greyish-green colour similar to the herb of the same name: it must have looked very fine, with black smokeboxes, splasher-facing and cab tops, and lining/lettering in yellow-ochre. |
| ... THE EMBRYONIC VILLAGE - ITS LIFE AND OCCUPATIONS: At the time of the building of the current C-of-E church and associated school on Station Road, West Moors was a community of rural folk earning a living off the land (farming, forestry, plant nurseries) or providing services such as carpentry, general dealing and the like. Each household would be remarkably self-sufficient, growing vegetables, keeping pigs, chickens, goats and the odd cow; only buying-in goods through the dealers (or increasingly via postal catalogues) when necessary. Surplus produce would be sold to neighbours or travelling 'higglers' or sent to local markets in Wimborne & Ringwood. Some cottagers could earn a little money by making items such as buttons, thatching spars etc., though this element of local production was being killed off by cheap 'imports' from mass production centres in the Midlands and the North Country - the influence of the railway of course. There were no 'big houses' in the immediate vicinity: the nearest such was Uddens House and that lay a little too far to the west to have day-to-day impact upon the people in the village. The other source of employment was of course the railway - of which more in a later section. The change in the character of local ways, begun in the middle part of Victoria's reign, accelerated in pace towards its close. A drift away from the land and towards towns took place. Rider Haggard, best known to us as a writer, was commissioned in 1901 to undertake a survey of agricultural England: within Dorset he wrote that he undertook a lengthy journey during which he saw only four other vehicles .. " three of them were brewer's drays and the fourth was a timber-drag ". It wasn't of course all one-way traffic. The railway enabled (often actively promoted) the initially slow increase in population as wealthier folk from Bournemouth, Poole, Southampton etc., moved away from those rapidly growing centres to something a little more bucolic. The railway provided the means to do this - and with these houses came a demand for domestic and garden work, plus supporting services. As this period (mid-1890s to early 1920s) progresses, this trend will become apparent. Passenger traffic through the station was sparse (witness the poor facilities for same!); it would increase as houses were built in the first two decades of the 20th century, both in West Moors and Ferndown - but freight traffic was another matter. |
| ... GOODS TRAFFIC AND LOCAL COMMERCE: Produce from the local small farms and newer nurseries / market gardens destined for the growing town of Bournemouth was catered for by pick-up goods rakes running off both lines through the station. Bournemouth's population at the start of the new century was just over 60 000 - a nearly four-fold increase in 20 years. And these were relatively wealthy households, demanding fresh produce and prepared to pay for it. In 1891, no fewer than 16 households in the local area are listed as either farmers, market gardeners or nurserymen, though by 1915, this number had dropped to around a dozen - I suspect that not all enterprises survived and there would have been consolidation through merging of farms. Use was also made of the poor heathland soils of St. Leonard's Common (listed as 'waste' a century previously) where both pigs and chickens were reared on a fairly large scale - again there was a ready market in Bournemouth particularly, but the railway also gave ease of access to Salisbury, Southampton, Poole, Dorchester & Weymouth. The piggeries that developed just after the Great War were apparently renowned for the quality of their produce - the manager of this cooperative (all ex-servicemen) was the son of an LSWR senior manager - and of course much of the produce was carried away by rail. ... But it's not just pigs and chickens encroaching on the moors: look at the schematic map I have drawn here and see the roads as they were by the middle part of the 1920s. All roads point to the Common! |
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This map shows the 'named' road network as it would be in
the middle part of the 1920s, i.e., at the end of the history covered by this
section. You can compare this with the housing distribution / development maps
below. The word 'road' has been omitted for clarity, and the residual tracks,
footpaths etc., across both the Common and west of Station Road are also not
shown: refer to map elsewhere for these. There is a lot of allusion to 'trees' by name and in groups and the word 'hurst' is itself generally taken to mean a 'wooded hill', though frankly when these roads were being named, the roads crossed fairly bleak heathland: Dene (as in Denewood), is usually taken to mean a 'little valley' which might be a tilt towards the valley of the Mannington / Uddens brooks. Moorlands / Moorside are more understandable; with Glenwood, we're back to valleys again (i.e., as in the Scottish glens). Avon Road was probably named after the river forming the county boundary between Hampshire and Dorset, which lies not too far to the east of West Moors. The Avenue is referred to as 'Church Road' in some texts, which is perhaps a better description, though the planting of trees along its length suggests an avenue of sorts. Highfield presumably reflects the (then) sight of the lonely stands of Pine on what would become the Fuel Dump, but was then open grazing for cattle / horses. Incidentally, on early photographs etc., Pinehurst Road is listed as "Pine Hurst" road, and I suspect this style applies to some other here shown, but it wouldn't be too long before the names were concatenated. |
| ...HOUSING DEVELOPMENT - EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY: At first, development was piecemeal - a few houses where The Avenue, Woodside and Denewood Roads are now and the major development which produced the Church, the School, the school-master's house and a residence for the Curate: all this took place in the last years of the 19th century. Although there had been a small chapel and school available to the villagers since before the station had been built (a school indeed since 1843, well before the railway arrived), the growing community needed much enhanced facilities. In 1896, land on the eastern side of Station Road owned by the Fryer family (Sir Frederic & Lady Frances Fryer - then serving the Crown in Burma) was sold to the Salisbury diocese: the cost of the buildings was met (out of his own pocket) by Claud Brown, first vicar of Verwood & West Moors: the school replaced an 1850s structure nearby and along with the school-house, was ready for opening in February 1896; the church & residence for the curate was started in 1897, and it is from this date that the 'iron room' (a corrugated-iron roofed hut) was moved to the other (western) side of Station Road(++) to allow the building of St. Mary's Church - Kelly's Directory has this entry ... " The Chapel of Ease of St. Mary the Virgin, at West Moors, erected in 1897 at a cost of about £3000=": the church & attached graveyard was finally consecrated in 1908. (The church was further extended in 1927 & again in 2010: the parsonage was eventually sold out of church service in the latter part of the 20th century). [ ++ It is possible that the land that the 'iron room' occupied from 1897 was the same plot that supported the original school/PO & residence from 1843, but that is speculation. ] Around 1908, a small Congregational Church was built close to the corner of Station Road & Moorlands Road; this became the United Reform Church in 1972, with the present building being new in the late 1970s. The growth of Stewart's Nursery (south of Uddens Water, along the Wimborne Road) and increased use of the car and lorry after the First World War, started to drag the focus of activity away from West Moors and more towards the older 'turnpikes', now upgraded to meet the demand of the 1920s motorist. Facilities were starting to appear to service the motorist, such as smoother road surfaces and easier fuelling points. |
| The map to the right is an attempt to
show how 'new' residential & commercial development progressed from the
middle of the 1890s and through the early Edwardian era. It has been
constructed using maps of the time - but this is somewhat problematical of
course as they do not always show the definitive location of housing - and so
these diagrams should be taken as a rough guide only. Areas with new-build
dwellings are picked out in light brown. Early in this period, the only grocery/general store is well to the north of later shops - roughly opposite the modern-day church; it apparently disappeared early in the 20th century presumably when the shops were built further south on Station Road. The 'Iron Room' was moved from one side of Station Road to the other to allow the building of St. Mary's to begin - around 1896. Around the turn of the century, a new 'Railway Hotel' was built just north of the railway crossing lodge, and the old Railway Inn on the corner of what became Ashurst Road was demolished - with Ashurst itself slowly adopting the alignment we have today - replacing the older meandering former moorland track. Piecemeal building of individual villas occurred along The Avenue, Denewood & Woodside roads, and a few along Pinehurst Road; cob cottages also continued to be built near the railway & elsewhere to the west of Station Road. However, the spur to development came with the arrival of the Brewer brothers (in 1902), who in the first dozen years of the new century bought up parcels of land extending into the Common and the expansion of the village commenced in earnest. During this period, the roads were fit for horses, carts and heavy wagons, but not much else. Only well into the twentieth century would tarmac be used on Station Road - other roads relied on crushed stone and in the case of Oakhurst and Elmhurst, they would remain rough tracks until well into the middle of the century. Although some larger houses were built at the top of these latter roads, most of the habitation in these areas was based around the gypsy community and were rather transitory features: often listed in the census returns as tents. |
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| This schematic diagram takes us from
the closing years of the Edwardian era, through the Great War and into the
mid-1920s: this period sees a dramatic growth in population of West Moors.
The village was actively marketed as a place of quiet retreat - with views
southward over falling country and to the east over the moors. It had good
access by rail, but with motor cars now becoming affordable for the middle
classes, houses were built further from the station - well along the length of
Pinehurst (originally Pine Hurst) Road (but not much beyond Elmhurst Road until
the 1930s) and Moorlands, Glenwood & Moorside roads saw the construction of
large villa-style properties - many of which can be seen today - with a large
amount of land attached: the latter has in recent decades been sold off for
'infill' housing. Also we now have a 'proper' shopping area growing along
Station Road - initially further south along the east side of the Road, then
when the Brewers built their offices on the corner of Farm Road, down from that
side - with further development in the later 1920s, and shops also just north
of the station and on the corner of Ashurst Road. Still no proper development
along Oakhurst or Elmhurst, though during this period, the gypsy community
moved (by agreement) from the area that is now occupied by the cemetery in
Priory Road to pitches around the Common. Note that there is NO development at the Ringwood/Wimborne (A31) end of Pinehurst Road - the track here is still running through open moorland - indeed looking at early photographs of the period, mature trees were individual affairs (except in small clusters on the heathland) and open space was much in evidence; the character of the village today (second decade of the 21st century) as regards trees etc., is totally different to what it was a century ago. |
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| The villas stood in plots of land from half to one acre, which was
the minimum required if you owned a pony and also to be able to have a cess-pit
(or similar) well away from the house (++). These were owned by well-off people
- some retired state state servants, such as returnees from the Indian Civil
Service and army / navy ex-personnel. They in turn would have provided a source
of employment to a small number of servants, either living-in or coming in on a
daily basis. [ ++ Main / piped drainage did not arrive in the village until
the 1960s; at the station, it was the unenviable job of the platelaying gang to
empty the foul-pits, and at the school, the waste was deposited on the opposite
side of Station Road!] A well would also be an 'essential' as piped water was not available until the first decade of the twentieth century - the first houses were connected to the water supply in 1907; indeed, many properties, particularly the older cottages of working folk, would remain reliant on well-water until as late as the Second World War - as evacuees were surprised to find! |
| ... DEVELOPMENT OF A VILLAGE: Around the end of the 1890s, a public house / hotel was opened on the western side of Station Road just north of the railway crossing lodge, which took over from the Railway Inn (and sometime smithy) on the corner of what became Ashurst Road a little further up the road. This latter was apparently demolished not long afterwards. The new 'Railway Hotel' was of course ideally situated to attract custom from railway passengers, though I fancy there wasn't too much trade from that quarter: the need for such must have been quite limited. James Bailey is listed as resident at the older Railway Inn in 1895, and it is he who is the landlord (and apparently owner) of the new Hotel in 1898, though also listed as a coal dealer: the station yard was over the road so he wouldn't have far to go to oversee this lucrative business. By 1903, the Hotel is under the care of Mary Ann Bailey, still carrying on a coal dealership - no James - he died in 1901. The Baileys were obviously canny folk though, because jump forward to 1915 and a 'James Bailey' (the son) is now a builder, residing at Studland House, Avon Road (still extant in 2012) and would go on to develop most of the plots along that road. The Hotel (though now again referred to as the Railway Inn) is under the stewardship of Frank Bailey, another son of the elder James. Comparing 'commercial' listings between 1895 and 1898, just three years, reveals a dramatic change in the village: in 1895, as well as the scattering of farmers, market gardeners / nurserymen-smallholders, there is just the shop (George Frampton) and the Railway Station ( James Hallett ). By the end of the century, the market gardeners are there (four listed) and the farmers are there (8), but commerce is booming: there are no fewer than three 'higglers' listed, gentlemen who dealt in a small way in such as poultry, eggs, dairy, meat in small amounts & animal feed; George & Ann Frampton are still running the village grocery near the church (though probably not for much longer - see below), and there are three(!) coal dealers: an indication how important this product had become to what was still a fairly small, scattered community. There was a rapid move away from burning turves, gorse, etc., all products of the heath towards increasingly cheap home-mined coal: brought of course by the railway. George and Ann Frampton had run the only store in the Victorian village, probably a cob-cottage attached to a small-holding with additional outbuildings, extensions etc., since at least the date of the 1861 census, and probably since the mid-1850s: George, from a family of farm labourers, married Ann Ware, the daughter of the first school-mistress in the village, in 1854; together they carried on the business until his death in 1901, age 68. Walter Stickland had married into the Frampton family only a few years before: he married Mary Frampton at Verwood on the 12th October, 1898. The Sticklands possibly moved the business further down the village but I can't verify that. Certainly by 1915, they are living further south on Station Road (roughly where the former post office was) and is listed as trading as a "Grocer / Tea Dealer". |
| ... SERVICES FOR A THRIVING COMMUNITY: A growing population (~1000 by 1921) needed ever more facilities: shops appeared on the eastern side of Station Road well before the First World War (see above), extending down as far as the modern-day Tesco store; around 1915, Lloyds Bank opened a branch in the village - this alone indicates the vibrant growth of the community as the nearest banks before this would be in Wimborne, Ringwood, Poole or Bournemouth - all a train journey away. North of the railway, the Iron Room had of course long been re-located to land opposite the church (in the late 1890s - from which time it housed a small lending library/reading room), and the Fryer family had sold land to the local council (West Parley Parish Council ~1914) in the same area for playing fields and erection of a village hall. The Great War prevented any work being done on this latter project until the late 1920s ... see next section. In 1920, as a temporary measure, an ex-Army hut became the first 'village hall' and was erected where the Memorial Hall is now. If you were ill in days gone by, and 'country' remedies had failed - then the nearest doctor had to be summoned from Hampreston or Wimborne. If you wanted to visit a doctor (or attend a hospital), then the latter place was easier to get to - either by rail or along the old turnpike. However, the NHS availability lay many decades in the future! Unless blessed with a comfortable income, a doctor's consultation was a luxury that many could not afford - and a request for a doctor to attend was usually in connection with a birth or death. The situation was eased somewhat when in 1907, the village got its first resident doctor: Surgeon-Commander Henry Hadden bought (possibly commissioning its construction) a large house in Woodside Road and for around twenty years, he was the sole medical practitioner, assisted later by a district nurse residing in Braeside Road. Dr. Hadden had a distinguished career in the Royal Navy prior to his arrival here - having seen active service in the Sudan. Prior to his leaving the navy, he was resident officer-in-charge of the naval hospital at Bermuda; during the Great War, he was gazetted as a temporary lieutenant-colonel in the medical service attached to the air forces, though I have no knowledge how this fitted with his duties here in the village. Many of the 'new' people moving to West Moors were fairly well off, and the area was becoming reasonably prosperous, which encouraged another bank, National Provincial (in the second-half of the century to become part of Royal Bank of Scotland / NatWest) to set up a branch on Station Road in 1923. As was common in small communities, banks were only open on a couple of days a week. Despite the growth of Ferndown, West Moors was for a little while longer still the focal point of the district: the local nurseries would send plants/seeds around the country, and market gardens/small-holders kept the station staff busy with produce for local markets. |
| ... THE BREWER BROTHERS ARRIVE: THE VILLAGE GROWS APACE: As touched upon earlier, in 1902 an event that was to prove of major significance to the village occurred: Harry and Job Brewer, who were builders and brick manufacturers from Verwood, began buying parcels of land in West Moors from various larger (and largely absentee) land-owners. The first 'villa' style houses were erected in the 'Edwardian' years leading up to the Great War (1914-1918). It is worth reflecting just why all this should take place here in West Moors at this time. The spur, I suggest, was the change in pattern of railway services outlined at the head of this section in the early 1890s. Up to that time, there was no incentive for people with money to live here as the journey to/from Bournemouth & Poole involved a change of train at Broadstone or Wimborne. By the early 20th century, the pattern had changed dramatically, and services from both lines (giving a combined reasonably frequent service through the station) were focussed on Bournemouth (West). Those that could afford to do so moved out from the larger towns for 'country' life, so there was a market for property in West Moors with easy access to the south coast. In addition, Bournemouth was now reaching such a size that some found it too 'busy' and wanted a quieter life, but still with access to a larger conurbation and associated shopping facilities: for this reason West Moors seemed to end up with a large proportion of retired civil servants (home and Empire), military men & spinster ladies! For anyone living at West Moors in the first couple of decades of the 20th century and wanting a run up to London, the railway service was very good: most of the 'up' Salisbury line trains connected with 'crack' expresses on the main West of England line into Waterloo: for example, in the summer 1922 timetable, a train left West Moors at 8.15am, connecting into an 'up fast' train at Salisbury which brought you into Waterloo at 11.10am: a few hours in 'town', and you could catch the 6.00 pm from Waterloo, which with a change again at Salisbury brought you back to West Moors (and a short walk to your villa home in a peaceful village) at 9.32 pm. No wonder West Moors proved to be a popular place to live! By 1915 (Kelly's Directory), West Moors gets a much enhanced mention (though still part of the 'West Parley' entry) " a rapidly increasing district, 6 miles north from the church (at West Parley), with a station on the Salisbury and Dorset Railway ..." Large swathes of land are still owned by a few landowners:- Mrs. Oldfield (Uddens Estate), William Fryer, Sir Frederic Fryer, the Earl of Normanton and the Earl of Shaftesbury. |
| In 1907, the Brewer brothers continued to expand - setting up an
yard/office & storage area in West Moors and continued to buy more land
over the next 20 years or so (i.e., up to the 1930s). It is from this time that
additional shops were constructed, both between the corner of Ashurst Road
& the railway crossing and south of the junction of Moorlands Road with
Station Road - this latter to become the nucleus of the shopping area we have
today - see the photograph below: of the two buildings, the furthest is still
standing - it is (currently / 2012) the doctor's surgery (McKinstry), and in
the distance the turning for Moorlands Road can be made out. There is no
Congregational church on the corner, so this must be very early in the 1900s.
The nearer building - possibly the re-located 'General Store' (see earlier
commentary), has long gone. In 1920, the Brewers opened an Estate Agent's office on the corner of Farm Road, which is still there, together with some of the original adjacent shops. |
| With more development came more services and as well as
piped water, in 1911 gas mains arrived in the village, supplied by the
Bournemouth Gas and Water Company; this was a major advance for those that
could afford it - many though would continue to use oil lamps, candles &
the solid-fuel range. These latter, incidentally, would be the basis of an
increase in the number of coal merchants servicing the area. In 1898 there were
three listed; by the mid-1920s the number had doubled with dealers coming in
from further afield (e.g., the rapidly expanding Ferndown) to collect coal from
the wagons or bunkers in the goods yard. The dramatic increase in the use of
coal meant that products provided off the heath (furze, gorse, heather) for
heating/cooking declined, and this factor, together with a diminished use of
grazing by cattle enabled trees to become established, altering the 'look' and
ecology of the heath - only reversed on Holt Common in recent years. During the 1920s, the growth of West Moors was steady rather than spectacular: the maps elsewhere attempt to show how housing developed both to the north of the railway (Woodside, Denehurst, The Avenue & Ashurst), but also along Pinehurst Road, Avon Road and Moorlands, Glenwood and Moorside Roads. |
 |
| ... SCHOOLING: In 1896, the present St. Mary's School opened, on the 17th February, with a head-mistress, Miss Gertrude Le Fevre: she had help from older pupils to teach all the children in one class, though by this time a paid 'assistant' was also available taking the infants. The numbers of children attending varied between 70 and 80. Facilities for the local children, as for rural youngsters the length and breadth of the country, were basic though adequate; one novelty was that there was a bathing place in the Mannington Brook: it was probably a little way upstream from where the railway crosses the Brook, utilising the footpath that crosses Hatchard's Copse (part of the Castleman Trailway now): this facility was formally taken out of use in 1921, though I can't believe that the local lads didn't continue to 'take a dip' in the brook on hot summer's days! Schooling finished age 14, but parents that could afford to do so would send their children to 'Grammar' or private schools in Wimborne, Parkstone, Poole or Ringwood - indeed in the 1920s and a while afterwards, there were two private schools for younger children here in West Moors which caused the enrolled numbers at St. Mary's school to decline. However, numbers enrolled in 1914 were 153 (up from 120 in 1907), the largest in its history, but in 1915, Ferndown got its own (full age-range) school, and so numbers fell, to 92; this drop was arrested a few years later by an influx of gypsies (see below), and in the early 1920s, school numbers were around 113. |
| ... WEST MOORS AND THE TRAVELLING FAMILIES: The gypsies of course had been part of the background to British life for centuries, but by the early part of the 20th century, travelling families recognised that their children needed schooling and increasingly their children attended the local schools. For the first couple of decades of the century, the gypsies were mainly camped on that part of Priory Common where the cemetery is now situated (conveniently close to the Ringwood - Wimborne road) - so they had a fairly lengthy walk to school, though they could of course get across the Common easily. There were also gypsy communities (or other temporary dwellers) on the Common, in what became Oakhurst & Elmhurst areas, and some along the Moors River, though these latter might have attended Three Cross school. The moorland/heathland has probably always been a favourite resting place for travelling folk, and in the 1960s, permanent settlements developed (see Section 7). |
| ... THE GREAT WAR - 1914 TO 1918: Unlike during the Second World War (see next section), when the railways were pivotal to the prosecution of that war, the 'Great War' [ August 1914 to the Armistice in November 1918, formal cessation in 1919 ] had minimal impact upon the local railway - though no doubt servicemen would be seen embarking and arriving at the station & elsewhere in Dorset e.g., Poole, Bovington etc. It appears that soldiers were billeted in the village: officers & senior NCO's probably accommodated in private houses with 'other ranks' having to endure tented areas on the moors. |
| Of course there was a human cost to the community: from the village
war Memorial - now located on 'The Petwyn' , 11 men are shown to have died in
this war - for such a small community, a loss that would have touched a great
many households directly or indirectly. Amongst the fallen were three brothers
- Albert, Arthur and Charles Dyer (related to the Brewers by
marriage) & the second son of Mark Vine, also named Mark; the Vines
had a smallholding at the top of Moorlands Road and were an integral part of
the community. And here too is a Wilcox: Frederick Arthur, the son of
George and Elizabeth Wilcox, George being a long-standing employee of
the railway - mainly working on the platelaying gangs, though he was originally
a porter at the station; Frederick was born in 1897, one of several children -
and part of a family whose name resounds throughout the early history of West
Moors. |
 |
| (This photograph, printed as a post card, shows the Memorial as originally erected in 1920 at the junction of Pinehurst (then Pine Hurst) & Station Roads .. I think was taken either late 1920s or early 1930s; note the type of road construction, the lack of pavements etc.) |
| For the railway staff, the Great War brought about a major change in working practice. From the earliest days of railway operation, men worked six, 9 to 12 hour days or nights (with a total weekly hours which could reach 72) with Sunday being treated as an 'additional' day and paid accordingly. As part of the Liberal government reforms enforced in the opening decades of the twentieth century, working shifts were limited to 8 hours and the working week to 48 hours. This was revolutionary: for the first time, men had time off during the week and time to do other things! It is from this time that the great allotment movements date, and the growth of voluntary societies, amateur choirs etc. |
| ... FERNDOWN GROWS: Although this is a history of West Moors, we have to make mention of our now much larger neighbour: in 1910, as the Edwardian era faded away with the start of the reign of George V, West Moors station was till the hub of the wider community, with the goods yard being often-times a busy place. But what of Fern Down - later Ferndown? Early in the twentieth century there was just a small collection of cottages strung out along the two former turnpikes towards Wimborne & Poole & cottages around the site of Stewart's Nursery, Trickett's Cross & scattered cottages elsewhere - much as in West Moors. The modern town was then split between West Parley and Hampreston parishes - much of it in the latter, with no real focal point. Children from Ferndown (apart from infants up to age ~7) had to go to schools in West Moors, Hampreston or West Parley until 1915, in which year Ferndown got its own 'all-ages' county-funded school. However, with increasing use of motor transport, especially post the Great War, Ferndown expanded dramatically. The first sign of the community there flexing its muscles appeared very early on - in 1906 - when several organisations in the area, including both parish councils (Hampreston & West Parley) asked the L & SWR to change the name of the station to reflect the fact that it served Ferndown. The company refused, but in the days of the Southern Railway, the name was eventually changed to " West Moors for Ferndown ". This map shows (schematically) where all these communities are - and their relative sizes in terms of numbers of households in the mid-1920s. Note that neither West Moors nor Ferndown have a specific parish to themselves: most of Ferndown is within Hampreston CP (civil parish), with small areas within West Parley and Wimborne Minster CPs; West Moors is mostly within West Parley CP, but the far northwest and west are shared with Wimborne and Gussage All Saints CPs, and in the north, what was earlier regarded as part of West Parley (and hence West Moors) is now within the relatively new civil parish of Verwood. |
 |
| ... MOTOR TRANSPORT COMES OF AGE: After the Great War, using war surplus stock (chassis / engines with purpose built bodies) many public bus services were started around the country by ex-servicemen. In 1919, the first regular public-service bus service began, linking Bournemouth with Ringwood, running via West Moors & Ferndown (though the image here appears to show a service that 'loops' round Wimborne rather than Ringwood). The service started on the 19th July; the frequency was just twice a week at first, but in a short time, the buses ran twice per weekday (Mondays - Saturdays), and given that the terminus in Bournemouth was conveniently near the shops & places of entertainment (unlike the two railway stations) and that the bus actually travelled close to where people lived, the scene is set for dramatic inroads into rail-borne passenger traffic. Also, with the spread of housing well away from the station, and the dramatic growth of Ferndown, these areas abstracted traffic away from the railway. In the 1920s, for those that could afford it, cars were becoming much more reliable and equally important, garages were available to service the many makes available - again often run by ex-servicemen making use of their knowledge gained in France and elsewhere servicing army (and Royal Flying Corps) engines. |
 |
| Even in West Moors, photographs of the time show a thriving Station Road shopping area with several rather splendid automobiles lining the road. There was at least one garage close to the railway station - and by the end of the 1920s, another purpose-built facility, together with a row of shops, was built on the western side of Station Road: more in the next section. |
| ... INTO THE FUTURE: The next section will carry us through the remainder of the twenties and through the turbulent decades that saw economic depression, social upheaval, another major World War and the post-war political changes that formed our modern society. It also marks the 'turning-point' in the fortunes of the railways of this country ...... |
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