History
LOST DORSET
NO. 22 POOLE David Burnett, The Dovecote Press
T
here is a good chance that one of Sherborne’s dozen or so late 19th century bakers would have been supplied with flour from Belben’s Flour Mill, whose trio of jettied-out upper storeys were a landmark on the Town Quay at Poole, as here in about 1895. Belben’s was one of the first steam-powered mills in the country, with its small fleet of vessels. Once milled and bagged, flour would have reached Sherborne via Stalbridge, the nearest station on the Somerset & Dorset Railway. The postcard reflects Poole’s changing fortunes. The collapse of the wealthy Newfoundland trade left it virtually bankrupt. It was also notoriously corrupt: described by one commentator as ‘nothing but decadence, deterioration and disgust’. The narrow streets behind the Quay were overcrowded slum tenements, prone to disease. The town’s mid-Victorian saviour
66 | Sherborne Times | May 2022
was the meteoric growth of its eastern neighbour, Bournemouth, whose population rose from 695 in 1851 to 78,674 in 1911. Poole’s merchants were quick to reap the benefits, supplying the building materials needed to fuel Bournemouth’s expansion. The bustle returned to the Quay. As well as ships putting to sea with Purbeck clay for the Staffordshire potteries, many more came alongside laden with grain, timber, and coal. dovecotepress.com Lost Dorset: The Towns 1880-1920, the companion volume to Lost Dorset: The Villages and Countryside, is a 220-page large-format hardback, priced £20, and is available locally from Winstone’s Books or directly from the publishers.
