IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
West Moors Road, FERNDOWN, BH22 9SB

Cast iron post by the UC road, in parish of FERNDOWN TOWN (EAST DORSET District), Ferdown, 30m East of Monkton Close; 50m East of traffic lights, by the road, on South side of road. Ringwood cast iron post (Trust), erected by the Ringwood, Longham & Leigh turnpike trust in the 19th century. Inscription reads:- : 4 / WIM- / BORNE : : RINGW'D / TRUST : : 5 / RING- / WOOD : Milestone Society National ID: DO_WBRW04

This little postbox is on the corner of Beaufoys Avenue, a long road which is cut off at both ends. The box is emptied finally at 5:30pm on weekdays and at noon on Saturdays.

Prior to the house building of the 20th C this area would have been pine covered sandy heathland. Some of the beautiful tall pines still remain even though the area is quite built up now.

56 years of postal services here came to an end on 31 October 2008, when this post office closed its doors for the last time. According to a notice on the door, customers were invited to drop in from 10am that morning for farewell drinks and nibbles.

At first sight this is a most uninteresting view. However, this simple, yet elegant wall, which is well over a century old, is all that is left of a once vast enterprise of importance not only in the history of Ferndown (now the largest non-coastal community in Dorset), but also of seminal importance to national horticulture. In 1859, the brothers William and David Stewart, the young heirs to a long-established Scottish plant nursery enterprise, decided to look to southern England for a milder base to extend their operations. They purchased a large expanse of land just south of West Moors (Dorset), north of the Wimborne to Ringwood road. The growing nursery helped encourage the development of Ferndown - indeed it was the Stewart brothers who decided to merge the original name (Fern Down). David Stewart built a large house on the site - Ferndown Hill House - and this wall surrounded that property. When the house was demolished (I believe in the 1970s) the wall and main gate to the property were retained.

This postbox stands outside what, from the sign over the window, is recognisably a former post office – see Image

This is the old gateway to Ferndown Hill House on Wimborne Road (East), Ferndown - the family home of the Stewart family. The nursery on this site has two claims to national fame: in 1955, they opened the first garden centre in the UK on this site - just a little way to the west of the family house. And in the same decade, as the firm relocated to a fresh site at Broomhill, near Wimborne Minster, the Stewarts introduced container-grown stock to the British horticultural industry, revolutionising production and sales. As can be seen, the gateway has been bricked up. Behind the wall now lies an estate of houses – the wall is all that is left on this once great enterprise, though Stewart's Nursery still trades at Broomhill and elsewhere.