Explore the ever-changing face of New Milton’s Station Road

THE history of Station Road in New Milton reveals that the street is continually evolving and changing. Station Road can be used as a historical guide telling of the rapid growth of New Milton. It is shown on the Ordnance Survey maps as running south from the junction of Avenue Road and Manor Road and ends at the junction with the Lymington Road.

The early records

One of the earliest records of this thoroughfare can be seen on the 1841 tithe map and apportionment book. This records that the land either side of the road going south from Ballard was owned by St Mary College, Winchester, down to what is now Old Milton Road and Ashley Road. It was part of the Fernhill Manor Estate. South of the crossroads the land was owned by either John Bursey Esq or the Rev Thomas Beckley. It was mainly arable in use, apart from a strip along the east side of the road from the crossroads up to what is now Osborne Road which was hedgerow and coppice.

On 5th August 1874 Winchester College put up for auction a large portion of the Fernhill Manor Estate. The purchaser was a Mr Henry Hewitt Kennard (1811-1878), a banker based in London. He and his brother, John Pierce Kennard, were directors of Denison, Heywood and Kennards and Co, of 4 Lombard Street, London. The two brothers, using their own money, had invested heavily in developing new railways.

The railway arrives

The London and South Western Railway built a direct line to Bournemouth from Brockenhurst, following an act of parliament passed on 20th August 1882. The route went via Sway and created a new station at Milton, and at Hinton Admiral. The line went through the southern portion of Mr Kennard’s land on the Fernhill Estate. The construction of the new line was completed in 1886, and the country lane was named Station Road.

The Kennard family sold off for development plots of land north of the new railway station. The Hampshire Chronicle dated 26th April 1890 reported the sale of the initial plots. Manor Road and Avenue Road were among the first to be developed for housing.

From Avenue and Manor Road southwards, a Mr John Chappell of London sold off plots of land on what was advertised as the ‘Milton Park Estate.’ On 8th August 1892 32 building plots along Station Road and in Osborne and Spencer roads were offered for sale in an auction held in a marquee on the estate. The auction was not a great success, and a second sale took place on 4th July 1894. A drawing from the second auction catalogue cover depicted a view of a small railway station among farmland. The only other buildings to be seen in the foreground were the Milton Hotel, later known as the Speckled Trout, along with a small parade of shops opposite. One plot on the east side of Station Road, running from the railway line to Osborne Road was offered for the construction of eight shops. Of note, the drawing shows an estate office in Station Approach. This building still exists and was, until recently, a taxi office.

The station Is named

The building opposite the Milton Hotel consisted of two premises. One was a garage owned by a Mr Fred Keeping. The other was a sub-post office run by Mrs Emma Newhook. Following problems with the mail being misdirected to the post office next-door to the Wheatsheaf Inn at Milton village, she started to call her premises the New Milton post office. In 1896 the London and South Western Railway was looking for a name for the new station and adopted the one created by Emma Newhook. New Milton was born on Station Road.

Buildings were created to the south of the railway line. The 1898 published OS map shows the east side of Station Road divided into plots with three houses built. The Milton Post Office had moved to the corner of Station Road and Whitefield Road. Misselbrook and Weston had a large grocery store beside the railway line. This building work created a demand for bricks. Brickworks were created in Station Road and Gore Road. Items such as timber and roof tiles could be brought in by train to the goods sidings.

Milton Hall was built circa 1899 by Mr Hugh Wyeth, a Winchester brewer who had also built the Milton Hotel and a house for himself in Spencer Road. He had the vision to see that New Milton would one day become a thriving town, and he invested in the area. Milton Hall, which survives to this day, was occupied by an estate agent, and was also used for auctions, public meetings and dances. One section was used as a branch of the Wilts & Dorset Bank.

For many years on the opposite side of the road there were some wooden huts beside the railway bridge. One was an estate agents and others were coal merchants. The hut that had been the Milton Park Estate office was also used by a coal merchant. The coal was brought into the town by train and stored in large wooden bunkers in the sidings.

Shops

A small parade of shops had been built from the corner of Whitefield Road to Station Approach. As well as the relocated post office, these included a butcher, a fishmonger, and a dairy and farm shop. By 1909 a further parade of shops running south from the Milton Hall had brought to New Milton: an ironmonger, a green grocer, a hairdresser run by a Mr Gore, Mr Kirkman’s chemist shop, a stationers and tobacconist owned by Mr Hamblin, and the Wilts & Dorset Bank had their own premises on the corner of Osborne Road. Over the years these premises have been used for a wide variety of businesses. The 1910 guidebook boasted that it was possible to obtain locally almost anything needed to create and maintain a home in Milton.

By 1910 shops were built south of Whitefield Road but only on the west side. A good example of how businesses served the needs of local customers before moving on, with the buildings being repurposed is the current nail salon on the junction of Whitefield Road and Station Road. Built in 1910, it was named London House, and was initially a milliners and drapers owned by White & Pitman. In 1928 the business was taken over and rebranded Bon Marche. In the 1950s it was used by Alderson’s electrical store. By the 1970s it was a toy shop, Toys A’ Gogo, before being used for several decades as a sports shop. It is now thriving as a nail salon.

For over 60 years, on the opposite side of the road were large private houses. They were later used by doctors and dentists who used one or two ground-floor rooms to run their practices while living with their families in the rest of the building. One of the houses, named Rosebank, became the town council office, and later the library and the first community centre. The house on the corner of Station Road and Ashley Road had a branch of the National Provincial Bank built in the garden. This was demolished in the 1970s and replaced with the flat-roofed building that became the NatWest bank and, until recently, KFC.

Entertainment

In 1910 the Unionist Club was built in Station Road. Today this is known as the Conservative Club. It was situated in a large plot of land, some of which was sold off to create a hall for the Post War Brotherhood. In the 1930s this became a public hall and in 1946 it was taken over by the British Legion and became the War Memorial Hall.

Further south on Station Road was New Milton’s first cinema, called The Scala. The building was a wooden ex-army hut, possibly from the Barton-on-Sea army convalescent camp that had closed at the end of the war. It was purchased by a Mr Wilkinson who in 1920 went into partnership with a Mr Scott to bring films to a New Milton audience. Films were shown from 6.30pm every Thursday, Friday and Saturday. They were silent movies with a pianist adding music.

By the late 1920s films with sound, ‘talkies’, were gaining in popularity and silent movies were on the way out. In 1929 New Milton’s second cinema, The Waverley, was opened at the southern end of Station Road, near to the junction of Barton Court Road. The Scala soldiered on. It was used for the Sunday church services when St Mary Magdalene church was being renovated and enlarged. It housed a cafe and confectionary shop. Finally in 1934 it closed its doors for the last time and in May of that year it was demolished. It was replaced with Scala Buildings which today houses a Chinese acupuncture business, Whites dry cleaners and a convenience store.

Names reused

The convenience store is named the New Milton International Store. This is just a few doors up from the site of a large grocery shop that was called International Stores and operated until the 1970s. The corner shop was for many years Wareham’s Cycle Shop. Not only could bicycles be bought and repaired but petrol was sold from three pumps on the kerbside.

It is worth noting that before the cattlegrid was installed near the Rising Sun, New Forest ponies often came down Station Road. They can be seen in the pictyre taken from an upstairs window above Wareham’s shop. Note the petrol pumps on the kerbside, the ponies in the road and the private houses opposite.

The first New Milton Advertiser

Moving further south along Station Road, a terrace row of shops was built in the late 1920s. One of these shops was Smith Printers. It was here that the very first edition of the New Milton Advertiser was produced. Edition No.1 was dated Thursday 7th June 1928. The front page included advertisements promoting many of the Station Road businesses.

The crossroads

Until about 1927 the corner of Station Road and Old Milton Road was undeveloped. It had been the yard for Haywards Farm. Some of the farmland was used to create the Recreation Ground, which was given to the people of New Milton in September 1920. Other farm land was used to build the Station Road shops. The farm house and farm yard were used by a builder’s merchants, later known as Robert Adlard. Eventually a purpose-built office and depot were created. The corner plot was developed and used by the Bournemouth Gas and Water Company. When British Gas sold off their showrooms in the 1990s a school uniform business operated there. It is now the home of Kimber Carpets.

A postcard aerial view of Station Road, possibly taken in about 1925, shows the development that had rapidly created Station Road. The long dark building of the Scala cinema can be seen as well as the private houses on the east side of the road. Hayward’s farm yard on the crossroads is also visible.

This article has covered a brief history of Station Road from the railway station to the cross roads. Next month’s Reflections will conclude with the southern half of Station Road.

• Nick Saunders MA is a local historian and chairman of the Milton Heritage Society. He can be contacted via nick@miltonheritagesociety.co.uk