Tuckton 1.33

Tuckton is a suburb of Bournemouth, situated on the River Stour in the eastern part of the borough. First recorded in 1271, this was a hamlet in the tithing of Tuckton and Wick until 1894, when the Local Government Act replaced all tithings in England and Wales with civil parishes and district councils. At that point, Tuckton became part of the civil parish of Southbourne, which was absorbed into the Borough of Bournemouth in 1901.Pre-historyThe lower reaches of Tuckton, including the shops in Tuckton Road, stand on one of the very flat gravel terraces that lie beneath much of modern Bournemouth. These terraces were formed around 35,000 BC, when a series of temperature fluctuations led to a rise in sea levels, inundating the Solent and its tributaries - which included the River Stour, in embryo form. In 1925, when a sewer was being dug beneath the present Broadway, a palaeolithic hand-axe was recovered from one of these terraces, in mint condition - later complemented by a similar relic, excavated near the Wildown Road junction in 1931. Further implements, plus the remains of sixteen Bronze Age cremation urns, were recovered in the 1920s from the site of Magnolia Close - just yards from an Early Bronze Age tumulus in Wick Lane, the largest of seven surviving tumuli in the Bournemouth borough.Tuckton FarmThe land at Tuckton was put to agricultural use into the early twentieth century. Originally this land formed part of the Manor of Christchurch, but in 1698 the Lord of the Manor, Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Clarendon, began selling off land to settle the debts of his alcoholic transvestite son. The large copyhold estate at Tuckton was sold for £350. It went through several owners including John Sloman of Wick House, who began breeding pigs on the unproductive plateau above Tuckton in the 1840s. The venture was a failure, and this land was eventually sold to Dr. Thomas Armetriding Compton, who founded the resort of Southbourne there in 1871. When Compton purchased the land it was still festooned with the remains of pigsties, equipped with very deep foundations in an effort to outwit the local rabbit population.