Citizenship ceremony

A friend became a British Citizen today & was presented with a certificate and smart GB passport cover. Quite an emotional ceremony for participants and their friends/family. We were honoured to attend at Bournemouth town hall.

As always I was snap happy and sent our friend numerous images of his important day.

This grand chandelier in the entrance lobby took my fancy, perhaps installed by the first occupant of the building? See below


https://www.flickr.com/photos/alwyn_ladell/sets/72157624672521789/
“The foundation stone was laid by King Oscar of Sweden in 1881 and it opened as the Mont Dore Hotel in 1885 (named after the French spa town in the Auvergne which pioneered the Mont Dore Cure - hence the slightly French look) and had hot and cold salt baths supplied with sea water that was pumped all that way from the sea. It was built as a sumptuous health spa primarily for rich consumptives by Dr Horace Dobell (one of the first four doctors in Bournemouth) next to the Sanatorium in what was then called Sanatorium Road, and achieved world fame. It included Turkish and other baths, a winter garden comprising a covered lawn and tennis court, and a concert hall. As a measure of its importance it boasted Bournemouth Telephone number 3. Its use as a convalescent home for wounded officers, during the Great War, was therefore quite understandable. It was requisitioned by the War Office on 20th November, 1914, for wounded members of the Indian Army Corps serving in France. Following their withdrawal a year later it became a British Military Hospital, and then a convalescent home for Officers repatriated from Prisoner of War camps in 1918 (you can find out more about this in the 1985 Local Studies Guide booklet: “Bournemouth and the First World War” by M A Edgington). It closed as a hospital in 1919 and was bought by the Corporation to became the third Town Hall in 1921 (the previous one was where the Criterion Hotel/Arcade stood on the corner of Old Christchurch Road and Albert Road)”.