IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Martins Drive, FERNDOWN, BH22 9SG

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.

Mixed woodland off West Moors Road, the entrance to Slop Bog Local Nature Reserve & SSSI. http://www.slopbog.org.uk/

Boardwalk allowing visitors to cross wet heathland of the nature reserve. http://www.lhi.org.uk/projects_directory/projects_by_region/south_west/dorset/slop_bog_access_and_understanding/index.html

Stream draining into Uddens Water, in the wooded part of the nature reserve. http://www.dorsetforyou.com/media/pdf/f/r/Slop_bog_Leaflet.pdf

Situated behind us there is a large area of woodland called 'The Warren', which has been cleared and earmarked for development.

Wet heathland on the nature reserve. http://www.dorsetforyou.com/media/pdf/f/r/Slop_bog_Leaflet.pdf

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 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.

The A31 is the main road west out of Southampton along the coast and at this point it is circling round the north side of Ferndown to by pass it and take the through traffic away from the Poole Bournemouth conurbation.