Literary links to Westbourne

Whilst Bournemouth’s association with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley is well-known, local people and visitors may be interested in Westbourne’s literary connections.

Paul Verlaine, the French poet, lived and worked in Westbourne as a teacher for a few happy months at the Catholic School of St Aloysius, first at Westburn Terrace, then moving to Surrey Road.  He composed two poems about Bournemouth.

Robert Louis Stevenson lived in the house called Skerryvore, Alum Chine Road - sadly destroyed during an air raid in 1940.  The site was laid out as a garden to his memory. During his two and a half years here he wrote “Kidnapped”, “A Child’s Garden of Verse”, and “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”.

Not so well-known today is another author who was a best-seller in her time, Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler, from Wolverhampton, daughter of Sir Henry Hartley Fowler, MP, First Lord Wolverhampton.  Ellen and her husband Alfred Felkin moved to Westbourne in 1916, partly to be near Alfred’s family, and partly because the Bournemouth air would help her health.  They lived at “Emo Lodge”, Clarendon Road, and later moved to 22 Marlborough Road which they named “Mershire Lodge”, Mershire being her fictional name for Staffordshire.  Both houses were sadly demolished and redeveloped many years ago.  They worshipped at St Ambrose Church, became involved in local life, and were friends of Sir Merton Russell Cotes, who also came from Wolverhampton.

Ellen wrote poems, hymns, short stories and novels, her best-sellers before moving here included “Concerning Isabel Carnaby”, “A Double Thread” and “The Farringdons”.  Living in Westbourne she wrote “Beauty and Bands” (1920), “The Lower Pool” (1923), and a collection of short stories, “Signs and Wonders” (1926).  On 22 June 1929 she died at home after a gall bladder operation left her weak.  The Bournemouth Echo immediately produced an article as a tribute.

After the funeral at St Ambrose she was buried at All Saints, Branksome Park, where Alfred too was buried with her in 1942.  The grave has been restored in recent years.

Information from “Ellen’s Bournemouth Years”, by Anthony Perry, published by Brewin Books.