Welcome to Poole!

This summer many Italians will go on language courses in the UK. Some will go to vibrant cities like London and Edinburgh and others will go to tourist resorts on the South Coast of England like Brighton and Bournemouth. Bournemouth is in Dorset and, a few miles to the west of it, there is the more exclusive town of Poole. This also has some language schools. Not only that, it has some of the most expensive houses in England.

american money

Poole is a natural harbour and it has been a port since medieval times. It did well when trade began with the American colonies, particularly for the fish of Newfoundland, and this helped create the town’s wealth. In the 19th century, when ships became bigger, the water in the harbour was too shallow and Poole lost business to other ports, like Plymouth, Southampton and Liverpool. The town gradually turned into a tourist resort, but it did play an important role in the D-Day landings of the Second World War.

millionaires’ row

One of the best views of Poole’s natural harbour is from the Sandbanks Peninsula. 100 years ago this was a piece of wasteland with no houses, but all that has changed. Today Sandbanks Road has the nickname Millionaires’ Row and, according to the British newspaper, The Daily Mail, the average price of a property here is £2.5 million. One of the factors in the transformation could have been the arrival of a certain resident in 1965. This was a lady by the name of Mimi Smith. She was Beatle John Lennon’s “Aunt Mimi” and she brought him up. She lived in a nice house in Liverpool, but when Beatlemania took off, life became impossible for her as fans were always going there. For this reason John bought Aunt Mimi a bungalow on Sandbanks Road called “Harbour’s Edge.” He paid £26,500, which was a lot of money in the 1960s.

john and yoko

Aunt Mimi was very happy in Poole, but when John was assassinated in 1980, she discovered that the house was still in John’s name. Technically, it now belonged to John’s widow, Yoko Ono, but she let Aunt Mimi live there until her death in 1991, at the age of 85. Yoko Ono did, however, put the house on the market the day that Aunt Mimi was cremated. The new owner demolished the property and built a new house. He sold it again in 2015 for £4.5 million.

happy days

John often went to visit Aunt Mimi in Poole and some locals even think that the line in the song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” “Picture yourself in a boat on a river,” was inspired by an experience in Poole. This was when Aunt Mimi’s neighbour, Peter Sandeman, took him sailing. John Lennon loved Poole. He once told his aunt: “Of all the places I have visited, this is the most beautiful.”