Lilliput is an area of

Poole Poole () is a coastal town and seaport on the south coast of England in the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole unitary authority area in Dorset, England. The town is east of Dorchester, Dorset, Dorchester and adjoins Bournemouth to the east ...

Dorset Dorset ( ; Archaism, archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to the north and the north-east, Hampshire to the east, t ...

, England. It borders

Sandbanks Sandbanks is an affluent neighbourhood of Poole, Dorset, on the south coast of England, situated on a narrow spit of around 1 km2 or 0.39 sq mi extending into the mouth of Poole Harbour. It is known for its high property prices and for it ...

Canford Cliffs Canford Cliffs is a suburb of Poole in Dorset, England. The neighbourhood lies on the English Channel coast midway between Poole and Bournemouth. To the southwest is Sandbanks which has some of the highest property values in the world; with C ...

, Lower Parkstone, and

Whitecliff Whitecliff, is a small area of Parkstone in Poole, Dorset, England. It is situated near the eastern shore of Poole Harbour and is a very sought-after residential district of Poole due to its park and harbour view. Whitecliff Park Whitecliff ...

and has a shoreline within

Poole Harbour Poole Harbour is a large natural harbour in Dorset, southern England, with the town of Poole on its shores. The harbour is a drowned valley ( ria) formed at the end of the last ice age and is the estuary of several rivers, the largest being th ...

with views of

Brownsea Island Brownsea Island is the largest of the islands in Poole Harbour in the county of Dorset, England. The island is owned by the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, National Trust with the northern half managed by the Do ...

and the

Purbeck Hills The Purbeck Hills, also called the Purbeck Ridge or simply the Purbecks, are a ridge of chalk downs in Dorset, England. The ridge is formed by the structure known as the Purbeck Monocline, and extends from Lulworth Cove in the west to Old H ...

. Well known residents have included modernist writer

Mary Butts Mary Franeis Butts, (13 December 1890 – 5 March 1937) also Mary Rodker by marriage, was an English modernist writer. Her work found recognition in literary magazines such as '' The Bookman'' and ''The Little Review'', as well as from fellow mo ...

, a very young

John le Carré David John Moore Cornwell (19 October 193112 December 2020), better known by his pen name John le Carré ( ), was a British author, best known for his espionage novels, many of which were successfully adapted for film or television. A "sophist ...

and disc-jockey

Tony Blackburn Anthony Kenneth Blackburn (born 29 January 1943) is an English disc jockey, singer and television presenter, whose career spans over 60 years. Blackburn first achieved fame broadcasting on the pirate stations Radio Caroline and Radio Londo ...

. Impresario

Fred Karno Frederick John Westcott (26 March 1865 – 17 September 1941), best known by his stage name Fred Karno, was an English theatre impresario of the British music hall. As a comedian of slapstick he is credited with popularising the custard-pie-in ...

who popularised the custard-pie-in-the-face comedy routine spent his last years in the village as a part-owner of an off-licence, bought with financial help from

Charlie Chaplin Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered o ...

, and died here in 1941 aged 75. Lilliput is home to Evening Hill at the edge of

Parkstone Bay Poole Harbour is a large natural harbour in Dorset, southern England, with the town of Poole on its shores. The harbour is a drowned valley (ria) formed at the end of the last ice age and is the estuary of several rivers, the largest being the ...

Salterns Marina Salterns Marina is a coastal area of Poole, Dorset Dorset ( ; Archaism, archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to ...

, a hotel 'Salterns Harbourside', the Lilliput C of E Infants First School, and an Anglican church 'The Church of the Holy Angels'.

History

Brownsea Island stands opposite Lilliput's harbour foreshore and is famous as the birthplace of Baden Powell's

Scouting Scouting or the Scout Movement is a youth social movement, movement which became popularly established in the first decade of the twentieth century. It follows the Scout method of informal education with an emphasis on practical outdoor activi ...

movement. Lilliput itself was host to a number of early scouting camps. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

at one stage it provided Britain's only civilian air route: Poole Harbour was temporary home to the Imperial Airways/BOAC flying boat fleet, which had its passenger HQ at

Development

The area occupying the northern shore of Poole Harbour was often referred to by the Victorians as "

Parkstone Parkstone is an area of Poole, in the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole district, in the ceremonial county of Dorset, England. It is divided into 'Lower' and 'Upper' Parkstone. Upper Parkstone – "Up-on-'ill" as it used to be known in ...

-on-Sea".

wrote about the local landscape and her childhood in one of the old mansions at the turn of the twentieth century in her autobiography ''The Crystal Cabinet: my childhood at Salterns'' (1937). Her great-grandfather had been a principal patron of the English romantic poet and artist

William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake has become a seminal figure in the history of the Romantic poetry, poetry and visual art of the Roma ...

, and her Lilliput home housed a large collection of Blake paintings (now in

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in En ...

). The autobiography took its title from one of Blake's poems. She adored the area and was critical of the kind of development then taking place in Lilliput and Poole–Parkstone–

Bournemouth Bournemouth ( ) is a coastal resort town in the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole unitary authority area, in the ceremonial county of Dorset, England. At the 2021 census, the built-up area had a population of 196,455, making it the largest ...

, which she thought soulless, and far from the " garden city" it could be. Aside from an enclave behind Evening Hill, a local beauty spot with panoramic views over Poole Harbour, modern development started in the later 1920s as more of the older estates were sold for suburban projects. A number of distinctive art-deco homes were built, including the landmark Salterns Court building at the new shopping parade. Before its development as a residential and recreational area there had been industrial projects at Salterns, which had been the area's local name. Some claim a connection to

Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish writer, essayist, satirist, and Anglican cleric. In 1713, he became the Dean (Christianity), dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, and was given the sobriquet "Dean Swi ...

and his novel ''

Gulliver's Travels ''Gulliver's Travels'', originally titled ''Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships'', is a 1726 prose satire by the Anglo-Irish writer and clerg ...

'', and there are local streets which have associated names. The name "Lilliput" probably derives from Lilliput House, an old country mansion built near Evening Hill, which may have been owned by renowned smuggler

Isaac Gulliver Isaac Gulliver (c. 1745–1822) was an English smuggler based on the South Coast of England, South Coast. Gulliver and his gang ran fifteen luggers to transport gin, silk, lace and tea from the Continent to Poole Bay and came to control the coas ...

or one of his relatives. Recent years have seen many new property development projects, especially in water frontage or harbour view locations, and often earlier buildings have been replaced entirely. The dilemma of development is described in ''The Dorset Village Book'':

References

External links

(''click on any image to view in media-viewer'')
The Poole Flying Boats

Lilliput's industrial past

About the name and the areas' development

*
The Dorset Village Book
'
Harry & Hugh Ashley, published by Countryside Book
{dead link, date=December 2017 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes
Google Earth view

Google Maps view

Salterns from above

'About Lilliput' presentation'

'''Looking Back at Lilliput''
Iris A Morris (1999) *
'Parkstone-on-Sea
'' Jeremy Waters (2014) Areas of Poole Poole Harbour