July, 1927
Postcard of the Exeter Hotel, (also known as Royal Exeter Hotel) Exeter Road, Bournemouth
The
present hotel, with its Victorian enlargements and the polygonal ‘palm court’
of 1919 on the corner of Exeter Park Road, can trace its history back to the
earliest days of Bournemouth, surviving an attempt to replace it with flats in
1959.
Much
of the hotel was built by its Victorian owner Henry Newlyn, whose father had
converted it from a former school to a hotel in 1871. Henry added the massive
central battlemented tower, adorned with a design of crowns, to celebrate Queen
Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887.
The
hotel had once been a boys’ school, run by Reverend J. H. Wanklyn; who laid out
Bournemouth’s first cricket pitch in the grounds, the subsequent owner,
developer Peter Tuck, built Exeter Park Road and a dozen villas over the
cricket pitch.
Built
in 1812, and known as ‘The Mansion’, the property was the seaside retreat of
Lewis and Henrietta Tregonwell, of Cranborne. They were so taken with the
beauty of Bourne when they visited in 1810, that they bought some land and
formed a small community ‘Bourne Tregonwell’, which later inspired the Lord of
the Manor, Sir George Tapps, to build a marine village that has since grown to
become Bournemouth.
Michael Stead, Heritage
Team, Bournemouth Libraries
Exeter House - the first house in Bournemouth, built by Lewis Tregonwell. Now part of the Royal Exeter Hotel.
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