From our Files: Scout hut fire...‘this town is ruined’...quiet life of a war hero
RETIRED shop owner Betty Perry and Julie Horsman of Totton deliver Christmas ‘shoe boxes’ to excited residents of a Romanian orphanage.
They travelled to the country with New Milton based charity New Life into Romania.
75 YEARS AGO
COUNCILLOR E. Pascoe was one of the four members of a deputation of the Federation of Meat Traders which interviewed Minister of Food Mr Strachev on Wednesday to protest against the unfair allocation of Christmas poultry to the Co-operative societies against other multiple shops and private traders.
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GUY FAWKES night ended in disaster for the 1st Lymington Scouts for their fine headquarters at the end of Emsworth Road was completely destroyed by fire.
In the early hours of Friday evening the scouts had a fireworks display and when the scouts left all appeared safe.
But about 2.30 the following morning flames were seen coming from the premises and Lymington firemen were called out.
Two firemen were injured, one badly when a can of flammable liquid exploded.
It is believed the fire started in lean-to outbuildings on the side of the headquarters and spread to its roof.
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SUMMONED for having allowed stray ponies to stray from his farm in East Boldre a man was fined 5s while another farmer had to pay a like amount for a similar offence in respect of a cow.
50 YEARS AGO
“THE town is ruined and I am afraid that local representatives have sold us out,” Dr Malcolm Tuddenham told New Milton Ratepayers meeting on Monday.
The doctor said most of the town was being ruined by the destruction of good homes and their replacement with flats.
He asked why when it was “clear that most of the population did not want it.”
He told the meeting: “The planning committee are totally useless at their job, complete detached from the realities and requirements of the neighbourhood.”
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HIGHCLIFFE citizens association have expressed their irrevocable opposition to the proposal for the A337 running through the heart of the village should be a route for juggernaut lorries.
A meeting of the association heard that it would be “most dangerous” to allow the lorries to use the Lymington Road as proposed by a joint study prepared by officers of Poole, Bournemouth and Christchurch councils.
Councillor P. Stickley commented that the report had been drawn up by “intelligent, hard working and efficient people.”
He said there was no alternative to Lymington Road as it was the “inadequacy" of the road system that was the problem not the ‘stupidity’ of the officers.
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WHEN Black Beauty took an evening stroll down the road there were complaints from the agister and locals.
However amidst all the fuss the erring stallion had returned and was waiting at the gate to its field to be let in.
The owner from Lyndhurst was fined £5 for allowing an adult stallion not having been approved, or marked to roam at large in the Forest.
The defendant said: “After the agister arrived I looked out and Black Beauty was by the gate. He was glad to return, he was only out for the evening. “
25 YEARS AGO
THE man who was responsible for shortening the Second World War has been living quietly in Lymington.
His role was revealed by MP Julian Lewis at the Houses of Parliament when he paid tribute to David Balme and men like him.
Mr Balme was just 20 when he led a boarding party onto a German U-boat seizing crucial documents and a machine that “looked like a typewriter.”
It was an Enigma, a naval coding machine carried by every German battleship and submarine. It was the only one ever captured and was taken to Bletchley Park where Alan Turing managed to crack its code – giving Britain huge amounts of military intelligence about Germany’s war plans.
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A SCHEME to build 16 townhouses on Barrack Road Christchurch has been thrown out by borough councillors who say it is over-development.
A reader has complained about the A&T’s front page article on the proposed opening of the New Forest’s first sex shop.
They were furious that the Forest Council has “allowed its view on sex shops to reach the public at large” adding: “The whole subject was treated with hilarity and plenty of ribaldry.
“Such snide innuendos do no one any good.
“No sex shops in the NFD please, thank you.”
