We are proud to announce that we will be commemorating our 175th anniversary in 2020, having been in business since our founding in 1845, uninterrupted by world wars, national disasters and recessions.

Rebbeck Brothers is one of the oldest professional firms in Bournemouth and we have been managing residential and commercial property continuously since Robert Peel was Prime Minister and the young Queen Victoria was in just the eighth year of her reign.

Our history is inextricably linked with that of Bournemouth itself. In 1807 Lewis Tregonwell and wife Henrietta took an excursion from their home in Cranborne to the coast where the Bourne Stream met the sea.

Henrietta fell in love with the wild scenery and beautiful coastline and suggested that Lewis build a house in such a ‘delightful spot’. The house, now part of the Royal Exeter Hotel, was built between 1810 and 1812. The Tregonwells gradually acquired more land and in the 1830s arranged for William Edward Rebbeck to move from Cranborne to become their estate manager.

He played a major role in the establishment of Bournemouth as a town; the area being transformed from wild stretches of heathland, steep cliffs split by chines, dense forests, thick scrubland and rough unmade roads used by smugglers.

Bournemouth’s development into an elegant Victorian town occurred quickly, helped by the fine and dry climate, balmy air and ozone from the many pine trees – which doctors found to be particularly suitable for prescribing for ‘invalids’.

WE Rebbeck played a major role in the town’s evolution, opening an estate office on the corner of Old Christchurch Road and Gervis Place and founding the firm which is now Rebbeck Brothers. We moved to our present offices in The Square in 1934.

William Edward’s son and grandson later became partners and Horace Mellery-Pratt, a Chartered Surveyor from London joined the practice soon after the Second World War.  His two sons, Anthony and Timothy, are partners today.