The New Bell Inn was originally founded on this site in the late 1850s and offered food and accommodation to the weary traveller along with stabling for their transport if required. The landlord also sold a range of groceries from the premises with the ale on offer proving popular with local fishermen who made their way inland via a pathway, part of which still exists in a more formal form, as Fishermans Walk..

If we think of what Pokesdown would have been like at this time we can see that it was about to enter a new phase in it's development.

Once, all that stood here was a small farm on the side of the Stour Valley, overlooking the small villages of Iford and Wick .

In 1766 Stourfield House was built here which encouraged a bit more growth but the area still remained essentially a small rural community in the middle of nowhere.

In the 1830s there were enough people in the vicinity to warrant the building of a small independent chapel but it wasn't until the latter half of the 1850s that things really began to take off when a more substantial chapel was built, the foundation stone of St James's Church was laid and some new roads and building plots were put up for sale. Also around this time the railway would have been sniffing around with plans to bring trains to the fast developing nearby Bournemouth although this didn't become a reality until 1870.

 In relation to the New Bell Inn, at the time it first opened there would have been the established New Inn at Iford, now the Iford Bridge Pub, and the Ragged Cat at Boscombe that became the Palmerston Arms, built a few years earlier, and not forgetting the Three Horseshoes Inn also at Pokesdown that opened a few hundred yards up the road from the New Bell Inn also in the late 1850s, which became the White Horse pub.

 The original New Bell Inn is likely to have been a modest building with the majority of the present stucture dating from the 1870s or 80s, perhaps once it was known that Pokesdown was to get it's own railway station, that finally opened in 1886 directly opposite the pub and which was known as Boscombe Station for the first 11 years.

 The New Bell Inn became The Bell Inn, and then The Bell in more recent years. before being renamed The Seabournes in 2009.

 .UPDATE.

Since writing the above text i have seen images of the pub that show the date 1904 on a date plaque on the end of the building. As far as i can see the date is no longer visible but might give a clue as to when the building we can see today was built.

A [ very ] potted history of Pokesdown......

Prior to 1810 there was no town of Bournemouth. All that lay between Poole and Christchurch, themselves not the large towns they are today, was unspoilt heathland with the more fertile land of the Stour Valley to the north and east that had supported small farming communities such as Wick, Iford, Holdenhurst, Throop, Muccleshell and Ensbury for centuries.

Although these communities were centred on the individual villages, farms and smallholdings would have been scattered across the surrounding area, an example being Pokesdown Farm which, along with a few cottages for farm workers, stood on the very edge of the heath where it began to slope down on the sides of the Stour Valley overlooking Iford and Wick.

Most of the farms, smallholdings and associated cottages came and went without being recorded on maps although Pokesdown Farm is one of the few exceptions, its origins are a little lost in the mists of time, some claim to have traced it back to 1580 although it was certainly there in the 1660s.

In 1766 when Edmond Bott had a large home called Stourfield House built at Pokesdown [ see seperate images and set for further info ] which at the time would have been in the middle of nowhere and perhaps a very unlikely place to want to build a house.

Stourfield House would no doubt have been a catalyst for more development at Pokesdown if only in the form of cottages for those drawn there by the employment opportunities such a relatively large house and grounds would bring to an impoverished rural community. It is likely that the former Pokesdown Farm morphed into Stourfield Farm in connection with the house.

The last two remaining old thatched cottages, known as 'Lily of the Valley Cottages' and being at least 200 years old, were demolished in the latter 1960s when Appletree Close was created, and with their passing went the last ties with the area's rural past.

The building of Stourfield House predates the official birth of Bournemouth in 1810 by some 44 years and except for the modest Bourne Tregonwell estate that remained all but unknown to the outside world, the first notable development to take place, and what really sparked the development of the town of Bournemouth was Sir George Gervis' 'Marine Village of Bourne' in the mid to late 1830s.

As Bournemouth began to expand around the mouth of the Bourne Stream in today's town centre the community of Pokesdown also continued to grow.

Bournemouth expanded its boundaries to take in neighbouring areas such as the fledgling Boscombe in 1876 and Westbourne in 1884 but Pokesdown, that had a chapel built in 1835, followed by a church, a couple of pubs, two blacksmiths, two schools, laundries and, in 1886 , a railway station, and who's population had grown from 171 in 1861, 867 in 1871 to almost 4500 in 1893, became an urban district that allowed it to govern itself on a local level but ultimately Pokesdown became part of the fast expanding Bournemouth in 1901.

Originally Pokesdown covered a larger area than it does today, reaching to the coast and a lot further into Boscombe. Twenty first century Pokesdown is a densely built up area with busy main roads and side streets clogged with parked cars, a problem that blights the modern world.

Stood outside Pokesdown Station with our back to the entrance i suppose we'd class Pokesdown as covering Christchurch Rd to the right towards Boscombe up to the junction with Parkwood Rd, Christchurch Rd to the left going over the railway bridge and along to the brow of what is called Pokesdown Hill that actually runs through an area that prefers to call itself Boscombe East on its way to Iford, and Seabourne Rd opposite until it meets Southbourne Grove.

The area boasts an interesting variety of architecture but has seen some buildings replaced by blocks of flats and tenement houses which is understandable if older properties, though full of character, don't meet the needs of modern society. It's a problem that needs to be managed carefully and is by no means one unique to Bournemouth and is being experienced across the country.

At the time of writing some traders and residents are involved in promoting Pokesdown as Bournemouth's 'vintage quarter'. a destination for independent shops as well as those offering a wider range of goods and services, in a bid to raise the area's profile.

The green on the corner of Christchurch Rd and Seabourne Rd next to the Seabournes Pub and directly opposite the railway station is being transformed with borders of flowers and an information board that highlights the area's history, with the aid of a £22,000 Lottery grant..

FURTHER READING.

www.pokesdown.org/history/PokesdownPast/04_Village_Starts...
Click on the 'history' tag to read J A Young's 'Pokesdown's Past'.
Pokesdown and Neighbourhood 1895 - 1910. A memoir by E G Wills A Bournemouth Local Studies Publication.

Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bournemouth_grant/7758773682/in/photostream