In the late 20th century small buffer zones to the north-east, north and north-west were infilled with low-rise housing, and in the 2011 census the Christchurch contiguous urban area, excluding Bournemouth, touching to the west, extending along the coast to take in Barton-on-Sea had 54,210 residents.

[8][9] Today the Quay, consisting of the Haven Inn public house, a number of former fishermen's cottages and a large car park, is still used by local fishing boats and is a base for water sports.

It is possible to walk 9 miles (14 km) along the beach; after the sandy east-facing stretch it turns increasingly to mixtures of shingle and pebbles for the remainder, as far as beyond the cusp of Hurst Castle.

They were formerly (collectively) called Haven House built, together with an adjoining quay, in about 1687 in connection with other harbour works under powers of the Salisbury Avon Navigation Act.

[16] This was the original Haven House Inn, run by Thomas Humby for at least eighteen years following the death of its landlady, Hannah Sillar, in 1802.

[23][24] In 1784 the Inn played a central role in the Battle of Mudeford, a violent conflict between a gang of smugglers and naval Revenue officers.

[25] This period saw the growth of Mudeford as a fashionable seaside resort for the well-to-do and Humby refurbished and enlarged the Haven House as a sea-bathing lodging-house.

[26] In 1861 the Admiralty ordered the construction of a new purpose-built Coastguard Station, which was erected on the north side of Christchurch Harbour at Stanpit.

[27] By this time Mudeford's popularity as a resort had waned and the Haven House subsequently became fishermen’s cottages and has remained as private dwellings.

[28] Sandhills was the holiday home of the Right Hon George Rose, Member of Parliament and close friend and advisor to the prime minister William Pitt, who had it built on the beach at Mudeford c.1785.

Rose's friend, King George III stayed there on a number of occasions, helping to promote Christchurch as a tourist destination.

[33] Visitors to Gundimore included fellow poets Coleridge, Southey and Sir Walter Scott while writing his epic poem Marmion.

The centre has five windows with a great, curved projection (bay) with a shallow, conical roof; its south west corner has a two-storey turret, shaped like a squat house with the upper storey mostly glazed to provide a view (belvedere).

In the late 1860s Viscount Bury had bought Elm Tree Cottage, which stood on the northern edge of the Sandhills estate, with the intention of erecting a seaside holiday home on the site.

[38] By his marriage to Ada Herapath, Fletcher was a brother-in-law to the artist and long-term illustrator for Punch magazine Linley Sambourne, whose diaries record that he stayed at The Anchorage on several occasions.

[49] It was Number 17 of the 31 'Original' lifeboats designed and built by Henry Greathead of South Shields, making Mudeford one of the earliest places on the coast of Great Britain to operate a purpose-built rescue boat.

[51] Later that year Rose sat on a House of Commons Select Committee that granted Greathead a remuneration payment of £1,200 for his selfless life-saving work.

[52] Part of the payment for the Christchurch boat was met from a fund established by Lloyd’s marine insurers to assist coastal communities to buy a lifeboat, though the bulk of the cost and subsequent running expenses still had to be raised locally.

In 1868 a lifeboat was presented to the inhabitants of Mudeford by Donald Nicoll, Member of Parliament for Frome, as a token of regard for his friend Viscount Bury, who resided at Elmhurst (now The Anchorage).

[55] The lifeboat was conveyed to Christchurch by railway and its onward journey to Mudeford was organised by local hotelier Nicholas Newlyn, all free of charge.

[57] Although they had been able to save only one of the men, Viscount Bury and Pride received a letter of commendation from Queen Victoria through Thomas Biddulph,[58] and the RNLI and Royal Humane Society subsequently awarded them both with a silver medal for their gallantry.

[65] It is the larger of the two features, the other being the Haven, that almost enclose Christchurch Harbour, leaving its water to rise and fall through a narrow channel known as The Run.

Formed by sand and shingle brought around Hengistbury Head by longshore drift and pushed towards the shore by waves from the east, the spit is the most mobile of Dorset's geographical features.

Prior to the construction of the long groyne at Hengistbury Head in 1938, it tended to grow steadily in a north-easterly direction and on occasion stretched as far as Steamer Point and Highcliffe Castle; most notably in 1880.