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WELCOME TO CAMDEN HURST

Camden Hurst Hotel History

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Living at Camden Hurst Early Brochure

TWO SHORT HISTORIES OF CAMDEN HURST

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Extracted from ‘A Short History of Camden Hurst’ by Molly Allott (one of the first residents).

In the nineteenth century the Cornwallis West family Iived in Newlands Manor and owned most of the land in and around Milford. There were two daughters, one who married the Duke of Westminster and the other who married the Prince of Pless. A close friend of the family was Earl de Ia Warr, whose ancestors had settled in America and founded an area which in time became Delaware. George Cornwallis West had a great friend in the Duke of Devonshire who had developed his own land into Eastbourne, an attractive seaside resort, and Cornwallis West decided to so something similar with Milford. He began by selling off the land on the clifftop in one-acre plots. Several houses were built by the new landowners and a nunnery where Maryland Court now stands and a hotel, the Victoria, roughly where Richmond Court stands today. The house built farthest away from the village was Camden Hurst.

The Pleasure Gardens were also created by the Danestream and a lake where the housing estate now stands in New Valley Road.

By the 1960s there had been a lot of changes in Milford. The Cornwallis West family had long gone, but not without leaving a permanent reminder of the family in the names of various roads! Newlands Manor had been converted into houses and flats and most of the houses on the clifftop had been replaced by blocks of flats. The owners of Camden Hurst had acquired the house next door, Iinked the two together and created the Camden Hurst Hotel. As the present Westover and South Lawn Hotels were still private houses the Camden Hurst Hotel, which had a private ballroom, was immensely popular and in constant demand by the local people and clubs in the area. But trouble came in the late 1960s when new fire regulations required the hotel corridors to be widened and this persuaded the owners to accept a good offer from GaeI Developments of Northern Ireland (of which Northern Bank, a subsidiary of Midland Bank, was a 60% shareholder)

The flats were first put on the market in 1976 when Blocks 1, 2 and 3 at the west end were completed and the blocks at the east end were nearing completion. The first residents were the Jobling family who bought flat no 1 and I was the sixth purchaser to move in, in March 1977, when I bought the original show flat, no 15,

As time progressed and the centre block was nearing completion the question of the freehold began to be of major interest to the residents. It was determined that aIl the residents should become owners of the freehold if they so wished and, once aII the flats had been sold, it was put to the vote.

Extracted from ‘Memories of Milford-On-Sea’ by Robert Walker.

Some of the most imposing of the larger houses of Milford were situated along Cliff Road, overlooking the sea and with panoramic views of the Isle of Wight and Christchurch Bay. By far the most impressive building along the Cliff top was the Hotel Victoria with its 3 storeys’ plus attics for the staff, standing in extensive grounds which included tennis courts and a large, covered garage. After the Second World War it was up-dated, re-named Solant Court, before eventually being demolished for re-development.

The next most prominent property along Cliff Road after Hotel Victoria was Camden Hurst being known mainly because of the very high stone wall, built in the early 30’s going all the way around its boundary. It stood on the west of the junction with Whitby Road. The stones for the wall’s construction were brought up from Swanage together with the stone masons who built it. It was topped off with a cement coping in which were embedded Jagged pieces of glass from hundreds of broken bottles and rumour had it at that time, that the lady of the house, together with her chauffeur, had drunk the contents beforehand. A few parts of this wall still stand but the house itself, which was turned into a hotel years later, has long since been demolished and a block of flats, bearing its name, now stands on part of the ground it once stood on.