The Way We Were Bournemouth, 1977
The Square in Bournemouth might be round, but who cares when there are so many great classics circling it?
There’s every chance that I might be somewhere in this picture. In 1977, I was six and attending St Michael’s Primary School, which was only about a mile away from this Bournemouth location. I was often here, probably several times a week, for The Square is the very hub of the town, a junction of major routes. Off to the right, the road leads down to the seafront, while going up Richmond Hill on the left, by the National Westminster (not yet, take note, truncated to NatWest) Bank, takes one to the A338 Wessex Way out of town and all points north, east and west. In previous decades, the town’s trams all congregated here, at a stand topped by the clock in the roundabout centre. And if that tower looks just a little like it’s leaning, well, despite council denials, it was. When the area was cleared for pedestrianisation in the early 1990s, the Bourne stream, which passes under The Square, was found to be causing subsidence.
Although I was still living in Bournemouth when the Square was sanitised – sorry, pedestrianised – when I think back to the town, this is much more how I recall the spot, with its hexagonal pebble-dashed concrete flower pots and the traffic constantly being held up by people trying to get from one shopping street to another. You often took your life into your hands navigating from Woolworths or Habitat to Lilley & Skinner or Wimpey.
The gentleman in the centre of the shot, sporting some quite magnificently flappy flares, is probably regretting his decision not to use the nearby traffic island to cross, as Fords fly at him from both sides. F. English was the local
Blue Oval dealer and very successful – everything coming towards the camera sports a Ford badge. Three different variants of Escort MkI nose are illustrated by the early 1968/1969 common-or-garden De Luxe with round headlamps and chrome effect grille ( left), plusher Super with square headlamps (middle) and a later L with circular lights and blacked-out grille (right). The Transit pick-up coming into view is a diesel, denoted by its extended front necessary to accommodate the bulkier oil-burning engine. The more prominent proboscis soon earned these chugging but trusty loadluggers the nicknames of Bullnose or even less complimentary Pig Snout.
Over on the other side of the road are two almost new machines; a 1976/1977 Vauxhall Cavalier shadowing a Ford Granada. We think the latter is a GXL – sharing the vinyl roof and black boot panel of the Ghia, but sporting prominent wheel trims instead of the more usual Ghia alloys. The older order is represented by two BMC Farinas. They’re both Austin Cambridges; one a 1959-61 A55 MkII with bigger rear fins, the other its A60 successor with trimmed-down ones. Being quite an, um, elderly-orientated place in the 1970s, I recall there being a lot of Farinas in Bournemouth. My headmaster at St Michael’s had one – a Wolseley – and when he got rid of it, for a Datsun, a school assembly berating the British car industry followed. It was a genuinely sad day. I can’t even recall what Datsun it was. It didn’t matter. It didn’t have a classy illuminated badge in the middle of its grille.
Also doing the rounds under the Queen’s Silver Jubilee red, white and blue bunting are a Volkswagen Beetle, Mini Clubman estate (with fake wood trim), a vinyl roof-clad Cortina MkIII, a couple of Morris Marinas in saloon and estate form, Capri MkI and a Vauxhall Viva HC. There’s also a Fiat 128 MkI. Now, my dad had one of those – in bright green – and about the time this shot was taken, too. So, if I am in this photograph, maybe that’s where I am, huddled down in the back seat. Aged just six and looking forward to The
Spy Who Loved Me at the cinema.