This morning’s news of the fire at Cliff End in Manor Road is bad news.
I hope that the main building has not been too badly damaged.
Calls for the derelict building to be pulled down are a mistake.
Cliff End, overlooking Boscombe Chine Gardens, was built in 1887 for Harriet Samuel of H Samuel jeweller fame.
She took over her father-in-law’s Liverpool clockmaking business in 1862 and called her own first shop, opened in 1890 at Preston, H Samuel.
A sundial on the wall of Cliff End has the initials R and M (Reis and Moses) and the motto ‘We only count the sunny hours’. Harriet’s husband Walter who died in 1863 was son of Moses Samuel.
This house is part of Bournemouth’s heritage and our nation’s history.