Audioguides Bournemouth

Bournemouth grew from nothing in the 1810s, when a retired officer named Lewis Tregonwell built a summer house among the pine trees and heathland at the mouth of the Bourne stream. Within a century the town had become one of Britain's most popular seaside resorts, its seven miles of sandy beach backed by cliffs threaded with zigzag paths and ornamental gardens, its pier stretching 183 meters into Poole Bay. The Victorian and Edwardian hotels that line the clifftops still define the skyline, though many have been converted to student accommodation for what is now a major university town.

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R.R. Tolkien spent his final years in Bournemouth and is buried in the Catholic cemetery at Wolvercote, but Mary Shelley's heart is buried in St. Peter's churchyard in the town center, brought here when her daughter-in-law moved to Bournemouth in the 1870s. The Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, perched on the East Cliff in a Victorian italianate villa built by the mayor Merton Russell-Cotes and his wife Annie, contains an extraordinary private collection assembled during their world travels: Japanese bronzes, William Etty nudes, and gifts from Henry Irving fill rooms that have scarcely changed since 1919.