Sandbanks: one road in, a chain ferry out.

Sandbanks is a spit of about a square kilometre reaching into the mouth of Poole Harbour, Poole Bay on one side and the harbour on the other. Banks Road runs its length and doubles as the approach to the chain ferry, which crosses to Shell Bay in four minutes, three times an hour, until eleven at night; when it stops for the night or goes away for refit, Purbeck is the long way round the harbour. Bournemouth Airport at Hurn is about eleven miles by road; Parkstone and Branksome stations serve Waterloo. The money sits in two places: beach and harbour frontage on the spit, selling in the millions; behind it, older, established households in Canford Cliffs and Branksome Park, on pine-wooded plots out to the Bournemouth boundary.

Along that road, or on the rise behind it, are the Haven Hotel at the tip beside the ferry, the Sandbanks Hotel on the beach side, the Royal Motor Yacht Club on Panorama Road with its members’ marina, the seafood restaurant on the harbour edge of Banks Road and Harbour Heights high on Haven Road; a mile inland, Parkstone Golf Club’s heathland course looks out to Brownsea. A house on the spit is on view from the beach, the harbour or the ferry deck. In summer the beach side fills with day visitors, arrivals and departures funnel along the same road, and a house occupied for part of the year sits quiet for the rest of it.

Most of the work here is residential and seasonal. A survey on the spit concentrates on sightlines and on the stretch of Banks Road every arrival shares; in Branksome Park it turns to long drives and screened boundaries. While a house stands empty it relies on the alarm and camera arrangements the survey recommends; away-day property watch puts an officer there for the windows when the household is known to be elsewhere. In season, security drivers handle the Hurn and London runs, and event cover suits the private parties and weddings the hotels and the club host.