Bournemouth Lansdowne from Bath Road ca 1975

Image: © Ronald Searle Taken: Unknown

The large building on the left is Royal London House, then the offices of Royal London Insurance. Today it is occupied as Bournemouth University student accommodation, with on the ground floor a KFC restaurant. The building on this site 70 years ago was the Metropole Hotel that suffered so terribly in the devastating Luftwaffe air raid of 23 May 1943 http://www.dorsetlife.co.uk/2013/04/a-minute-of-intense-devastation-bournemouths-bloodiest-air-raid/. On the right is the Roundhouse Hotel opened in 1969, and beyond, the *Lansdowne clock tower of the Bournemouth Municipal College that opened in 1913. Bournemouth Public Library formed a part of this building until a new purpose-built library was opened in the Triangle in 2002. *A gruesome discovery was made at the clock tower after the 1943 air raid, when a body that had been blown clear of the Metropole Hotel, was only recovered after laying undiscovered for over a week. Authorities had been alerted to investigate after it was observed that seagulls were mysteriously gathering there. A memorial to the dead was unveiled nearby on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the raid on 23 May 2013. Image

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