It's been 23 years since Boscombe Hospital was demolished.

Despite undergoing a confusing number of name changes, it was Bournemouth's main hospital long before the creation of the Royal Bournemouth Hospital in 1992.

However, the hospital first started, not in Boscombe, but behind the town hall in 1855 in the form of the National Sanatorium for Comsumption and Diseases of the Chest which later became the Royal National Hospital.

Following that, the first dispensary was opened in a cottage in Yelverton Road in 1859.

The poor were given tickets to attend by benefactors. In its first year it recorded 125 people cured, 21 relieved and three incurable.

As the town's population grew, a larger building was opened in Stafford Road in 1868 before the decision was made to establish a building for infectious disease patients.

A site was purchased on Boscombe allotments and despite uproar from local residents, the building, called the Boscombe Hospital and Provident, was completed in 1876 at a cost of just £1,310.

In 1887, a second site was founded in Poole Road, Westbourne, as it was thought there wasn't enough provision for the west of Bournemouth.

In 1911, the two sites merged and called themselves The Royal Victoria and West Hants Hospital.

When the NHS started, the Westbourne branch became an ENT hospital, then later Westbourne Eye Hospital, while Boscombe carried on as a general hospital.

By this point there were just 825 beds to serve a population of 223,000, rising to 400,000 during the summer season.

It expanded rapidly with a pathological laboratory, premature baby unit and accident centre.

Construction started on the new multi-million pound Bournemouth Hospital in 1984.

See next week's Echoes for a fuller story