The High Street became a shopping destination in the 1800s.

A Nation of Shopkeepers

Things bought from markets and peddlers were now stocked in fancy shops.

After the merchant crash of the1800s, life was looking up in Poole. New libraries, parks and hospitals opened, and in 1901 electric trams started running through the town.

The old industries of shipbuilding, brick making and brewing continued. New businesses such as iron foundries and potteries became established. Large, properly fronted shops began appearing in Poole, replacing little workshops and market stalls. Distribution became profitable. Railways meant people and products arrived cheaply from far away.

Shoe Shopping

Poole was part of the ‘Nation of Shopkeepers’ and more people had more spending power. By 1897 Hawkes’ Shoe Shop (est. 1847) was the largest fronted store Poole had ever seen. It was the first shop in town to use electric lighting, and one of the first to have a telephone. People flocked from far and wide, including Bournemouth, to try on footwear.

Ancient Alleyways

Don Nutt investigates the changing uses and strange names of Poole’s alleys.

"One of the things that’s really become clear to us is that once upon a time the roads all came along the promontory from the town centre, as it were, down towards the bridge, and they were more or less in parallel.

But it was the alleys that provided the links across the promontories so between the roads the linkages were all on foot. Poole is inherently a place which is easy to walk around.

The funniest one I’ve come across is to do with the area of St Clements Lane. St Clements Lane is the one with the castellated wall that goes along it and some people talk about it as being the old town wall.

Down in that area there used to be a foundry and some of the people that we spoke to who were brought up in this area in the fifties were telling us that they used to know it as whizz-bang alley because that was what was going on in the foundry – it used to terrify them – as they were running down the alley there were things going whizz bang inside the foundry.

The people that were describing Poole Quay to us and Old Town in those days were saying it was a smelly place, but not a nasty smelly place, although some of the alleys were nasty smelly places, but a nice smelly place.

There was vinegar coming out of one shop, there was the beer – malt being brewed – there were several breweries on the promontory in those days, and of course the beer would be brewed every day and it would be ever present.

Toffee apples were mentioned, fish being laid down in different places, so there were different smells in different parts of the town, baking; all of these things were going on.

And you tend to forget because these days life just doesn’t have those smells very often, other than in one or two places."