This is the main road entrance to Bournemouth Airport and I personally think this is entirely sub-optimal. Making this worse is that there is no routine bus service to the airport and so passengers are forced into getting a taxi or having someone drive them (or drive themselves). Those options aren’t cheap and the airport seems to be resistant to doing anything useful here.
It is of course just coincidence that the airport has a £5 drop-off fee and really doesn’t want people being dropped off at the exit to the airport approach road.
They’ve been busy putting these photos along the road, just in case anyone missed the previous three. And, other than for a short stretch, there is actually a pavement.
No safe pedestrian access? There’s a pedestrian crossing here and a wide pavement.
The council wrote to the coroner (here’s the letter), after someone died (yes, quite), saying that they didn’t have the power to add a pavement to the short missing section of the road that didn’t have one (in the top photo) but they would support the airport to make this safe.
Anyway, for anyone with a backpack (or at least, not something they have to wheel along), it’s relatively easy (if they like walking….) to walk into the airport across the nearby fields (and I’ll likely post about that soon).
I like an old font as it represents so much family history and heritage. This robust Norman one dates to around 1200 and is made of Purbeck marble. It was used at the priory until it was replaced at the end of the fifteenth century.
It is a little worse for wear, but it’s done well to survive at all. The current font used at the priory is Victorian, but I like that this one remains standing nearby. There is some decoration to it, although the base appears to date from a later period.
This is now one of the oldest things still standing within the church, I find it intriguing that this was likely put here when King John was on the throne and it has probably never left the church.
In this feat of photographic professionalism I appear to have managed to get more of the neighbouring Indian restaurant in the photo than the actual pub. Anyway, this is the only venue in Christchurch that’s listed in the Good Beer Guide and we ventured here first.
The keg beer selection which seemed well curated and had a number of interesting options on it.
There’s also a cask beer list just visible on the right of the photo, but when we tried to go back the next day for me to work through that the venue was just too busy. The service was friendly and efficient, the team members worked well with the limited space that they had.
The coming soon board with a variety of interesting sounding beers.
My first beer was the Pomona Piece of the Pie from Electric Bear Brewing Company. It had a nice crumble taste to it, although it wasn’t quite tart enough for me, but it had pleasant and subtle lingering flavours.
And my second beer was a third of a pint of the Double Choc Fudge Cake from Yonder Brewing. This had a nice cake flavour, which is handy given the name, although perhaps it could have been richer and smoother.
The venue was busy on Friday night and very busy on Saturday night, so they’re obviously surprising and delighting the local community. This was probably the best pub in Christchurch from my perspective, so it seems a marvellous decision to put it in the Good Beer Guide. As a wider comment, this feels like the future of pubs, namely a strong focus on a community venue, decent beer and a welcoming atmosphere.
Above is a plan of Christchurch Priory which was drawn in the early nineteenth century and it notes the “supposed site of the cloisters” and this is terminology which has been used more recently. I don’t claim to be a cathedral expert, but I’m struggling to see that there’s much “supposed” about it and it seems quite definite. But, I guess that they’re using the correct historical term for when there isn’t direct evidence…. They were likely pulled down just after the Reformation, when the church was saved from destruction by the townspeople who petitioned King Henry VIII to keep it as their parish church.
The building on the right is obviously post-Reformation and it’s connected now as part of a relatively new development when a closed up Norman door has been reopened.
This seems to me to inevitably be the site of the former cloisters which once housed an early school.
The range would have gone along here, with the doorway on the left being the access point. Those arches are Norman (well, not the restored one on the left) and I imagine were ornamental to the cloisters.
It does feel that it would be nice, without wanting to remove the Priory’s parking spaces, to lay the site of the former cloisters out and make a little lawned area in the centre (I think called a garth). I mean, I’m sure the Priory is more concerned with the current building not falling down (it’s been on the heritage at risk register), but maybe if they one day get the money…..
This is the courtyard entrance to the Stonegate operated Ye Olde George Inn, part of their Social Pub and Kitchen chain. They claim on their website that it’s the best pub in Christchurch. I don’t think it is, but there we go….
The real ale selection was a little uninspiring, but they had a couple of options at least, the Gold from Hobgoblin and London Pride from Fullers.
Some preserved wattle and daub. The building dates to the fifteenth century when it was a private residence, although it became an inn by the seventeenth century (earliest records say 1630) so it’s likely the oldest licensed premises in Christchurch. It was reconstructed after the English Civil War and it’s thought that some of the stone was pinched from Christchurch Castle which Cromwell had ordered to be destroyed. It’s also mentioned to be haunted, but I think that’s said for any vaguely old pub.
The interior of the pub, which has also been known as the George and Dragon, felt historic and interesting. There’s a large exterior area, which is rather necessary as the inside isn’t the largest. The toilets are external, which is something of a throwback. The venue is also keen to note that they’re dog friendly, although the large and spacious garden helps with that aspiration.
The London Pride tasted as expected, with the Pipers crisps being delicious as ever. The prices though were way towards the higher end of the scale and really over the top for a Stonegate pub.
The venue’s food menu, which was still a little expensive, although not unreasonably so. The service in the pub was friendly and engaging, with customers being served in turn despite the relatively small bar layout.
There was some Stonegate signage saying that you could get a free drink by signing up to their app. I have endless enthusiasm for this sort of thing, so I managed to get a free pint of Guinness, even though the manager was initially unsure this was included in the offer. But, it scanned through and I felt that overall we received rather decent value for money with the addition of this beer to proceedings.
All told, it’s an interesting venue given the heritage of the building, but I can’t help but think that Stonegate could do a lot more here. There is a disparity between the price of half pints and pints, something CAMRA doesn’t like (quite rightly in my view) and the pricing seems rather high.
However, much as I might think they’re making a mess of matters, it’s still well reviewed and it was reasonably busy and so they obviously know far more than me about this one. I liked the building and the service, but it was the free Guinness that surprised and delighted me most of all.
There was a lot to delight and excite me about Christchurch Priory (I don’t get out much) and so my two loyal blog readers can look forward to a heap more posts.
Anyway, this is a beautiful Norman arch which was built in around 1140 and served as the Prior’s entrance to the church.
It’s really not in bad shape, but it was sealed in 1539 following the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The cloisters came down and this door into the Priory wasn’t needed and it remained sealed until 1981. The general wear and pollution to the stonework shows that this door was subject to the elements for some centuries, but it is now protected.
The lighting was more challenging to get a photo in this direction, but this is standing inside the church looking out to the new extension. I can’t find anything online about the project to reopen this door in the 1980s, but it seems like a marvellous undertaking.
I’m pleased to note that Ross and I managed to visit every pub in Christchurch (the Dorset one, not the New Zealand one) so that means a heap of blog posts.
Formerly known as the Ship Inn, the venue has a long history, the core of the building is thought to date to around 1688, with a Victorian facade on the front. Christchurch was very much a smuggling town in the eighteenth century, so perhaps there was a fair amount of that going on in the pub. The word ‘inn’ indicates that there was accommodation, and newspapers from the 1850s show that there was a large room upstairs which could be used for meetings. There was a recent planning permission change request and the owners said that the interior had been so knocked about that there was a limited amount of original layout left.
The Ship is more of a restaurant than a bar, but they do allow drinkers in and we were made to feel welcome during our visit.
The Doom Bar had run out, although I didn’t personally consider that as any great loss, so they had two beers from Timothy Taylor’s on.
We sat at the bar and I went for a Golden Best and I was pleased to discover that I haven’t had it before. It was well-kept, light. fluffy and sweet, so that met my expectations, although there was nothing overly notable about it.
The venue appears to have recently been taken over by new owners and the reviews seem positive. The menu is mostly traditional pub food, but it seems like an effort has been made to source locally and the presentation looks decent.
Looking at old photos of the pub, it was a gastropub and jazz bar fifteen years ago, so the theme of a food led venue isn’t something new. The last owners had an Asian themed menu, although the new owners seemed to have stepped back from this and are aiming for traditional meals served in what I think is designed to be a contemporary manner. Anyway, it was welcoming, clean, friendly and I got to try a beer that I hadn’t had before.
I rather like a castle, especially one that’s free to visit, although there’s not much of this one left.
This is pretty much what exists today, not quite what was originally here. The first castle here was likely in the Saxon period and would have been a traditional wooden motte and bailey arrangement, although this lovely practice of putting a heap of sticks at the top of the hill wasn’t entirely sustainable after 1066, so the Normans rebuilt it in stone in the twelfth century.
The doorway in and back a little to who was behind this project, namely Richard de Redvers, one of those efficient Norman lords who followed William the Conqueror across the Channel and ended up owning half the south coast.
And now inside, looking outwards.
The information board.
The view over Christchurch Priory.
It requires some imagination to be able to see this as a substantial defensive structure which once controlled the local area. There was more of the castle still standing by the time of the English Civil War, but then Cromwell had some of it demolished which is sub-optimal from a heritage point of view. In many ways, it was an appropriate way to go as it was finally used for defensive purposes when Parliamentarians seized it and the Royalists besieged it until they gave up. It was then that Cromwell thought it was best to ensure it wasn’t used by anyone again. After this, helpful local denizens pinched bits of it for their own building project, so it’s remarkable that there’s anything left.
And there are two negative TripAdvisor reviews which are somewhat ridiculous, complaining it seems that someone hasn’t put some of the castle back again.
“A few crumbling stone walls at the top of a knoll. I do like history but this little bit of it was not very exciting I’m afraid”
and:
“It’s just a pile of rubble now, nothing at all to see here except a plaque with the typical “this castle was home to…” dialogue written on it…honestly it’s pointless coming to visit unless you like giant stones”
Unfortunately, Cromwell has evidently failed to meet the expectations of these visitors.
It was reported in 1992 that English Heritage were worried about people meandering up the hill and damaging the mound, so they installed some steps and these are still going strong today and seem to have tackled the erosion problem from people creating their own desire paths.
Anyway, I’m not sure that anyone is going to spend more than around fifteen minutes visiting the castle, but it’s a relief that at least some of it has survived.
This looked like an interesting and quirky venue, although it wasn’t initially clear to me whether it was primarily a food venue or more of a bar.
They use beach huts as external seating to add some character to proceedings.
The food menu and the chicken schnitzel looked tempting…. But I had already eaten (not that this always stops me) and decided not to.
It was a pleasant interior and it transpired that it was a bar as well as a restaurant, although it wasn’t overly busy when we were there.
The postcard theme is evident here.
They had the Follow the Green Line from Round Corner Brewing and I was pleased to see something a little different on keg. It ran out near the top and the helpful team member said that they were changing the keg, although I was slightly doubtful that they’d have another as it’s not a mainstream beer. It transpired that they didn’t, so usually this beer would be discarded and another choice offered. But, I wanted this beer as I hadn’t had it and I’m happy with the end of a keg line, although not at the end of a cask line….. So, I asked to keep this and they could just pour some Asahi in another glass to make it up. I was glad that I did, it was a decent limey beer, citrusy and smooth.
It probably didn’t help their stock control, but there’s the Asahi which tasted as expected.
Some more postcards.
The venue had a welcoming atmosphere, the team members were friendly and I liked their beer selection as it made an effort to be wide-ranging. I hadn’t visited this bar when I’ve been in Bournemouth before, but they’ve been going for over a decade. All rather lovely.
We hadn’t intended on going in here, but it looked intriguing and so we popped in en route to the railway station to get to Christchurch. It’s part of a small chain of four bars, the others being in Bristol, Birmingham and Cardiff.
I rather like the decor and general theme, it’s suitably quirky and informal.
The food seemed affordable, here’s the hot dog menu.
And the pizza menu.
The beer list and that’s quite an impressive beer tower with the seven pint option.
There was a singer, but he wasn’t deafeningly loud so that was rather lovely.
I think it’s aimed primarily at students, but it seemed welcoming to everyone.
The bier lift is a nice touch.
I might have ordered half a pint of Hooch, which is sweet, delicious and I accept not a craft beer. Well, actually, I think it comes close.
The online reviews were very positive and the team members were friendly, welcoming and personable. Although I felt that this review seemed a little sinister, there should be no excuse for exclusion.
I was on holiday in Bournemouth for a few days and wanted to pop in for a pint on a Sunday night. I was told by the door staff that the company policy was that no individuals may enter. This was because it took them ‘over capacity’. As a 52 year old man travelling alone, on a Sunday evening and with no more than 30 people inside this seemed ridiculous. I did send a message via the website as yet I have got no reply. Shame really, dismissive door staff and a poor service, could do and should do better.
I can’t find any other similar reviews, so hopefully it was the case that they were at the capacity that they wanted. Anyway, I thought that this was an informal and well managed venue, with the food and drink prices seeming reasonable. I like pub chains with an interesting theme or concept, it adds a little something to the whole arrangement.
