John Lennon’s aunt Mimi and Sandbanks

It may not have been the haunt of footballers, pop stars and Russian plutocrats that it is today, but when John Lennon bought his aunt Mimi Smith a waterside home at Sandbanks in 1965, it was already an exclusive address. The average price of a house in the UK then was little more than £3,500, Read More…

Sandbanks: What the milkman saw!

  Long before the proliferation of expensive homes and exorbitant land prices, Dorset’s ‘Platinum Peninsula’ was little more than a windswept sand spit, largely uninhabited save for a few fishermen. Towards the end of the 19th century Sandbanks was part of Lord Wimborne’s Canford estate and was home to two hotels, a coastguard station and Read More…

They loved it, yeah, yeah, yeah

Of all the places that ‘had their moments’ according to the lyric of John Lennon’s elegiac song In My Life, 46 years since its release, Bournemouth fits the sentiment as well as any that figure in the history of The Beatles. Still revered as one of the greatest – and most commercially successful – groups Read More…