Smugglers and a few fishermen were the only ones who knew the isolated beaches and the district has the equivocal honour of having produced in a Mr Gulliver one of the country's most famous contrabandists who has given his name to many farms and cottages and is memorialised also in the nearby hamlet of Lilliput.

Not until 1809 did the first domestic building go up in what is now the centre of Bournemouth and that was a wayside inn.
The French émigré's bypassed Bournemouth, settling instead at Christchurch, Poole and Lulworth - and the railways later did the same.

Not until the Franco-Prussian War did Bournemouth begin to find favour. The English nobility, deprived of the Riviera, discovered it.
But if Bournemouth found a place very late in Catholic history, not so its hinterland. Only eight miles away the Jesuits had been at work from the early years of the first Elizabeth's reign until the opening of the 19th century.

Their headquarters was a farmhouse (with farm) hidden away from any high road at Stapehill, near Wimborne, and commanding such views over the moorland that none could approach without being observed.

The house (pictured left) was home, hospital and retreat house for the Jesuits of the district, while to the cemetery in its grounds were brought from many miles around the bodies of priest and layman.


During the penal days the community ran a school which remained until the end of their days there.
Early in the 18th century the existence of the community leaked out and gave rise to a highly imaginative report in the Post Master or Loyal Mercury of Exeter, of October 2, 1724, claiming the discovery of a seminary which had 60 rooms, all underground and housing 300 staff, students and domestics, for which the farmhouse was a blind.

The report recorded the dispersal of the 300, adding: "'tis thought 'twill be very difficult for them to fix so much to their satisfaction again in this country."
In fact, it was not until 1802, their work accomplished, that the Jesuits left Stapehill, their place being taken by Cistercian nuns who still form the only community of their congregation in Britain.

But the priests left behind them -a rare kind of memorial. In the Anglican church at Hampreston, a hamlet not a mile from Stapehill, two tombstones lie side by side in the aisle. As the inscriptions testify, they cover the graves of Frs. Charles and Richard Caryll S.J.

There is a large churchyard outside, yet the Jesuits share with only six others the shelter of the church.

Two explanations are given. Some say that their good works so won the hearts of the villagers that they insisted on their burial within the church.

Others, less credulous, point to the undoubted kinship of the priests with the lord of the manor, who had the living in his gift.

The church displays a copy of the Protestant oath "against all Poperie and Popish innovations" with the names of 97 villagers who took it in 1641 and of 15 who refused. The original farmhouse, incorporated into the convent, is still in use.

If Bournemouth and district stepped late onto the pages of Catholic history, it has since been busy making up for lost time.
A century ago not one church stood in the 25-mile coastal strip between Lymington to the east and Poole.
(Lymington church, lying snugly with its school just behind the High Street, dates from 1859. The school is now being extended at the expense of the presbytery garden).

To-day there are 32 Catholic centres - churches, chapels, schools and religious houses and the Catholic population numbers very many thousands. In Bournemouth itself are seven parishes, with their churches, three other Mass centres and five schools.

The dioceses of Portsmouth and Plymouth divide the area between them, the boundary actually cutting through Bournemouth borough and living suburban Ensbury Park in association with Penzance that it does not have with its fellow parishes in the town.
Newest of the churches is St. Joseph's, Branksome, opened not many weeks ago and already being called "the last jewel of the century."

And an architectural jewel it is, not so much externally as in the light, colour, spaciousness and lovely adornment of its interior. There are Stations carved into the stone of the gallery that are content with three or four figures only, the outlines lightly limned in red and the only other colour the gold of Our Lord's aureole.

In contrast is the Lady altar triptych, carved in deep relief and beautifully coloured, the central panel of the Nativity a crib in itself. Shadowy angels float on the glass screen that separates porch from nave and the austere high altar stands out like a silhouette against the darkly glowing red of a huge backcloth.

An appropriate culmination for a century that opened with Mass by a dying priest in a hotel room.

J. W. Robertson (1962)