THE PALL OVER THE MALL A SAD STORY OF OUR TIMES


Castlepoint is a project comprising one anchor store (Marks & Spencer) and three primary units (ASDA, B&Q and Sainsbury’s) along with 20 other key units arranged around a 3,000 space, two level car park. This new mall lies on the eastern side of Bournemouth in an area previously called Strouden Park, a suburb that had been served by a “Parade” of local shops containing a butcher’s, a greengrocer’s, a chemist’s and a Post Office. Strouden Park was a human- sized settlement. The necessities of life were a short walk away and grander items could be accessed easily by a bus trip to smart shops three miles away in the centre of town.


Bournemouth is a town that grew greatly in the Victorian and Edwardian eras just before the dawn of the mass motoring age. As a result it has a poor traffic infra-structure: too many suburban avenues and insufficient arterial roads. These arteries have become sclerotic, narrowed by parked cars.


Castlepoint is serviced by one road “Castle Lane” which has long outgrown its rural name, and might be better termed “Castle Lanes”.With housing on both sides along most of its length, it has been difficult to provide as many lanes as are needed at times of peak traffic density. Castle Lane serves two


major shopping centres (Castlepoint and Tesco), four secondary schools and the large NHS Royal Bournemouth Hospital.


As Castle Lane is the sole route to Strouden Park, those living in the vicinity of Castlepoint have suffered several years during the construction of the new mall, and extras traffic lanes have isolated their community from “greater” Bournemouth. Older folk needing a taxi to transfer them 1 mile to Bournemouth Hospital have faced extra waits of 30 minutes or more for a taxi to arrive followed by an expensive, slow crawl along the thrombotic artery.


nameplate and its purpose. No problem, surely? Its baker, butcher and the candle-stick maker may have gone , but just opposite was a huge ASDA store, a gleaming Marks an Spencer and a Sainsbury’s where rain beat a tattoo “let me in” on a glass roof.


In the run-up to Christmas 2005 the Mall was riding high, shops in Bournemouth town were closing; town’s edge was its new centre. Castlepoint’s car-park had been built on sand ( and clay). An object of necessity, not of beauty, it had leaked throughout its few months of life. Eventually, structural engineers declared it unsafe. It must be repaired. The powers that be ordered that Castlepoint’s shops must close - no car-parking, no shopping. The picture at the top of this page shows the deserted appalled Mall within its ring of steel that “came upon a midnight clear”.


Strouden Parade : we only serve


Shopping Malls advertise themselves to potential clients on the basis of how many people live within one hour’s driving distance. As such centres vacuum customers sucking all down the one feeder tube, smaller local centres lose their convenience stores and survive through a prepon- derance of service outlets. Strouden Parade has lost its pride, its


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Along Castle Lane there was rejoicing at the city of Tescopolis that built an extra car-park in ten days. Back in Strouden Park, the halt and the lame had no food shops within walking distance and no chemists for miles. They stayed at home and existed - a life without Christmas.


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