Charminster, Bournemouth

Charminster is a residential and commercial suburb of Bournemouth in Dorset, situated between the suburbs of Springbourne (to the south-east) and Winton (to the north-west). It was incorporated into the County Borough of Bournemouth in 1901.

Although there are no known references to Charminster before 1805, the name and settlement predate the nearby districts of Springbourne and Winton by several decades. The first known reference to the district comes in the Christchurch Inclosure Award of 1805, in which a 'Charminster Lane' is cited, along with two plots of land called 'Charminster' in the possession of Matthew Aldridge, the owner of Muscliff Farm. The earliest reference to any inhabitants comes in the 1841 census, in which three families are listed at Charminster: Paul Fletcher, a tinker (with his wife and seven children); John Burridge, a bricklayer (with his wife and four children); and Richard Watton, a labourer (with his wife and ten children). By this stage much of the land in the district was owned by James Harris, 3rd Earl of Malmesbury, who had received 150 acres here under the Christchurch Inclosure Award; he is commemorated in the Malmesbury Park Estate, south-east of the present Charminster Road. It is not known why the name 'Charminster' was applied to this district. A. D. Mills suggests it was a straightforward appropriation of Charminster near Dorchester, which was recorded as a toponym from the Domesday Survey onwards, and which translates as 'church on the River Cerne'; why it should have been applied to this part of Bournemouth, however, remains unclear.

In the 1860s the Earl of Malmesbury, working with the architect and designer Christopher Crabb Creeke, drew up plans to build over Charminster. These plans were suspended in 1866, however, when the Tories returned to power, Malmesbury taking up the position of Lord Privy Seal in the 14th Earl of Derby's third administration. Consequently, the 1870 Ordnance Survey map shows little more than tumuli and brickfields at Charminster, while the suburb of Springbourne was developing independently to the south. The first modern dwellings in Charminster were built around 1880 after Malmesbury's retirement from politics. His nephew and legatee, Edward Harris, 4th Earl of Malmesbury, continued to develop the area, opening up what became known as the Lansdowne Park Estate between Heron Court Road and Fortescue Road.

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