Beales department store, Bournemouth, 2024

A large, curved, multi-story brick building with many horizontal windows stands on a busy city street. The sign reads “Beales.” People walk and sit in the foreground. The sun creates a bright halo behind the building under a partly cloudy sky.

The massive, looming presence of the Beales building, a former department store in Bournemouth.

Having gone bust in 2020, the Twentieth Century Society writes:

A planning application to convert most of the building to residential use was refused in 2016 because of a wish to retain retail floor space in the town’s primary shopping area against a backdrop of a sizable public campaign to retain Beales as a store – “I back BEALES.”

Look at how well that worked out! In July 2024, the building has been granted planning permission to convert it into housing with gym and pool, as well as three ground floor retail units. These will surely be of similar architectural value as those in Bristol & West House.

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