‘What will happen when WHSmith store closes?’

WHEN I was chair of the Bournemouth Town Centre Management Board, I secured a meeting with the Royal Mail consultation officer accompanied by the town centre manager when their plans for closing the Crown Office (main Post Office ) were made public.

With 13 counters and usually only two or three actually open at any one time, the queues often snaked out into Post Office Road (originally called Beckford Road ).

Many jewellers’ runners were stuck in the street with parcels containing £50,000 worth of items desperate to be sent off quickly and safely.

At its seaside-resort peak this Post Office reputedly had handled 60 million ‘wish you were here?’ postcards and one manager was the husband of the author Flora Thompson ( Larkrise to Candleford).

She was a regular visitor to Winton Library and her house in Edgehill Road has a blue plaque.

They closed the Post Office anyway.

They even admitted that although it was a ‘consultation’ , they were always going to close it….despite the huge demand for all its vital services at that time.

The relocation ? Upstairs at WHSmith !

So, what about disability access, especially if the lift failed?

They said the staff would serve customers on the downstairs shop floor…..

The queues there then snaked around the pen counter and down the stairs…..then they decided to close one, then two, then most of the counter tills.

I hear you ask , having shaken off many pesky customers and made the counter hard to find and usually unstaffed , what happens now when WHSmith in The Square closes?

Answers on a postcard perhaps ?

PS: WHSmith lived on Richmond Hill near Sir Hubert Parry and The Duke of Norfolk. I wonder what he and indeed they would think of Bournemouth having no Post Office and no WHSmith ?

Nigel P. Hedges

Granville Place

Bournemouth