From Our Files: Library tantrums...snake escape...container port plea

Then & Now (with St Barbe Museum + Art Gallery): Keyhaven war memorial, 1958

The Keyhaven War Memorial, constructed in 1919, stands as a quiet sentinel by the salt marshes, honouring those from this small coastal community who gave their lives in the First World War of 1914-18.

Simple and solemn, it bears the names of fishermen, labourers and sons of the village who never returned from distant battlefields.

Surrounded by the cry of seabirds and the sweep of tides, the memorial is a reminder that even the most remote corners of England felt the war’s toll. Each Armistice Day, villagers gather here to remember with reverence, linking Keyhaven’s present to the sacrifice of its past.

50 YEARS AGO

Tantrums at the library counter are revealed in the report of Hampshire county librarians presented to the council. Because of increases in fines, staff at library counters are “receiving a good dose of of verbal abuse when implementing the new scales”.

Old-age pensioners, who were exempt from fines, are now being charged half rates for overdue books after it was found that “they were abusing the system by keeping books overdue, particularly books in demand by other people”.

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A five-foot boa constrictor named Cynthia, which went missing from a home in Dark Lane, Blackfield, last August, has returned home.

Her owner said that she found Cynthia on top of her box having apparently slithered back into the house through a window.

Although much thinner than before, Cynthia had apparently been living off small prey.

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A 12-year-old Highcliffe boy who together with another boy stole a bottle of whisky, a bottle of sherry and three cans of beer, was found drunk on Avon Beach.

He told Christchurch juvenile bench that the experience had put him right off drink saying: “I just cannot see myself doing it really, it was just as someone else had done it. It was terribly stupid.”

The boys father said that he had been “corporally and otherwise punished by me.”

The boy was fined £2 for being drunk.

25 YEARS AGO

Southern Water has reported that 77 of the 79 beaches in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, Sussex and Kent, have passed European water quality tests this year.

The pass rate of 97.5% announced by the Environment Agency compared with 41% in 1988 when the company began its multimillion pound environmental investment programme.

Hampshire beaches which passed included Hampshire, Christchurch, Milford-on-Sea, Lepe and Calshot.

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Council leaders have urged New Forest residents to make their views heard on controversial plans to build a new container port at Dibden Purlieu.

The Associated British Ports want to develop the £500 million Dibden Terminal but the council says it is unnecessary and was detrimental to the lives of local residents and the environment.

But ABP said the expansion of Southampton’s port facilities was vital to the future of 10,000 jobs a £1.3 billion yearly contribution to the economy

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A New Milton couple are battling to keep almost 30 exotic parrots because neighbours complained that they screech and squawk for several hours a day.

The couple have been served with a noise abatement notice by New Forest District Council.

They say complaints have exaggerated saying: “They like to chat but they are not screeching.”