PAGES FROM KELLY'S...
......(and Mate's!) Street Directories
To start this page, we have scanned in the Moordown sections of Wimborne Rd (plus one or two other streets) from various years, just to get a 'feel' for the best way to present the information....
To select pages from a specific year, just click on the appropriate year button below...the pages will open, as a PDF file, in a new window. You can read, copy or print them as you wish...
1911 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933
1934 1935 1936 1938 1939 1940 1942 1944 1950
1952 1955 1957 1961 1963 1965 1969 1971 1975
(Click your back button to return here...)
More soon...
For nearly 100 years, up until the mid 1970's, 'Kelly's Directory' was an annual publication which performed a simliar function to that provided by 'Yellow Pages' today. During the first half of the 20th Century there was competition, with 'Mate's Directory' published annually as well.
Because of their temporary nature, many of those earlier directories simply got discarded, as the new editions arrived each year.
The surviving examples, as you might imagine, are an absolute goldmine of information for local historians, but are not always that easy to find!
We are fortunate in that our Heritage Reference Library, here in Bournemouth, has copies of many of both Kelly's - and Mate's - Directories, going back to the beginning of the 20th century..... A real treasure trove of information.
Unlike Yellow Pages, Kelly's and Mate's Directories are listed alphabetically, by street name. That means, of course, that pages relating to Moordown streets are scattered throughout the books, so that there is no systematic way of logging specific Moordown information, without digitising and publishing the whole volume.
The books are also notoriously diffcult to 'scan' digitally (they tend to be very large volumes, with over 1000 pages - which refuse to lie flat!), and so an easier way of retrieving the (relatively) few pages that might be of interest to us, is to photograph them...it's MUCH quicker.
As mentioned above, to date we have photographed a few pages, from a selection of different years, of the main thoroughfare through Moordown (Wimborne Rd), plus one or two others roads. More will be added soon...
Obviously, specific projects may require specific 'searches', but with a straightforward photographic update to existing 'year' pages possible, and the simple addition of extra 'year' pages, when required, it should be possible to build up some useful samples, without having to get involved with a huge 'digitisation' project.
If you have any specific details you'd like us to include, just let us know, and we can try and add your 'page' during our next 'photo session' at the Library.
(A word of warning...reading these pages can be very addictive...they tend to bring back lots of memories!!...)