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Christchurch: Purewell and Somerford

This page follows Christchurch: Quay and Church Street. All except two of the photos on this page were taken on a partly cloudy day in late June 2020 using a Fujifilm X100F compact digital camera.

If instead of taking a right turn off Castle Street towards the quay, as in the preceding two pages, you continue east, Castle Street becomes Bridge Street. It starts with a bridge of the river Avon and then, a hundred metres farther on, another bridge — also over the river Avon. (A different tributary, obviously.)

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These turnbuckles, smaller versions of which we used to use on hang gliders in the 1970s, look structural rather than merely decorative. If so, it seems extremely unwise to me.

Just to the right of the photo is an entrance to a private residence. It used to be the door to an art materials shop open to everyone.

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Not only the rich avail themselves of expensive accommodation in Christchurch.

Local government officials and employees are supposed to serve the citizens. Instead, they serve only themselves. They attempt to hide the fact by cramming as many occurrences as possible of the word community into their publications.

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A mile or so farther on is Somerford, which used to be the site of an airfield. US Army Air Force P-47 Thunderbolts were stationed there at one period of World War 2. One, taking off to the north, failed to clear houses and crashed, killing its pilot and several people on the ground.

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This Sea Vixen, photographed with a film camera in 1998, was vandalized by the citizens of Somerford and was relocated to a different part of the country. I still cannot believe that jet fighters were built in Somerford and, in World War 2, other aircraft including Airspeed 51 troop-carrying gliders.

The figures are one inch high.

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This topic continues in Boscombe.

External link

Christchurch Airfield on Wikipedia