In the middle of Bournemouth's town centre, just off Old Christchurch Road, Horseshoe Common is easy to overlook and easy to love once you notice it, a curved sliver of open green space wrapped by the road that gives it its name. It has none of the grandeur of the Lower Gardens nearby, but it plays a quieter, useful role: a patch of grass and open air between the shops, bars and restaurants of the town centre.
A Victorian shape
The common's distinctive outline isn't a coincidence. Dean Park Road curls around it in a horseshoe, part of the very first street plan drawn up for the young resort town by Christopher Crabb Creeke, Bournemouth's first surveyor. Horseshoe Common itself was laid out as a public park in the 1870s, making it one of the older pieces of green infrastructure in the town centre, older than much of the development that has grown up around it since.
A public realm reborn
For years the area had a reputation as a traffic-dominated cut-through, hemmed in by alcohol-led nightlife venues. That changed in 2012-13, when Bournemouth Borough Council reworked the space as part of its Three Towns Travel programme, using a masterplan drawn up by urban design consultancy Feria Urbanism. The result, new seating, street furniture and a flexible event space, was aimed squarely at making the common a place to linger rather than pass through, and at drawing in the kind of daytime, food-led businesses that have since opened nearby, including Turtle Bay on its edge.
Visiting
There's no admission charge and no set opening hours, Horseshoe Common is open access, day and night, like any public common. It makes a handy, restful stop if you're walking between the Square and the shops of Old Christchurch Road, and it's one of several green spaces dotted through the town centre. Explore more of them, and everything else on offer, in our guide to things to do in Bournemouth.