From Our Files: Hotel’s red reward...non-stop paper train...fuming over floods

50 YEARS AGO

CHEWTON Glen Hotel is rated highly in the new AA ‘Guide to Hotels and Restaurants in Great Britain and Ireland’.

It is awarded five red stars, the red stars instead of the usual black ones denoting hotels which are “considered to be of outstanding merit within their normal star ratings”.

Only 15 hotels in England excluding the London postal area have been awarded red stars, only four of these are four star ratings.

There is one other hotel in Hampshire to be awarded the high rating, the Pine Tree Hotel, Sway, which is given a red star rating.

In the January edition of Vogue in a “Vogue Travel” article entitled “Hotels There and Everywhere” giving details of hotels around the world, just one single hotel is listed for England – and that is Chewton Glen.

The authors state: “Outstanding service: the sous-chef of the Savoy has been persuaded to move here and the food is outstanding.”

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“IT was a driver’s error – he forgot to stop!” a British Rail spokesman told the A&T when asked why the Waterloo paper train went straight through New Milton station on the morning of Christmas Eve.

Asked if this meant the train had gone through a signal, the spokesman replied: “Not necessarily. There was no danger. These things do happen, We all make mistakes.”

The incident certainly took the newsagents waiting for the train’s arrival at 5.05am by surprise. “It rushed through the station at 90 miles an hour.”

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SEEN in the vicinity of Wheel Inn, Pennington, on Christmas Eve a “streaker” riding a motorcycle – wearing only the regulation crash-hat!

25 YEARS AGO

TWO thousand students and staff at Brockenhurst College celebrated the new year by forming the figures 2000 for a millennium photograph.

The event was organised by BTec national public services students as part of an assignment for their ‘Organising an Event’ module.

The idea for the Millennium photograph came from general education co-ordinator Glenda Granville who said: “It will be a tangible memory for students and staff of their time at Brockenhurst at the Millennium.”

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TORRENTIAL rain left water pouring off the New Forest over the Christmas holiday period with emergency services much on demand, including firemen kept at full stretch and the WRVS setting up rescue centres.

Roads were rendered impassable such as the Brockenhurst, Sway B3055 with deep flood water under Latchmoor railway bridge.

Christmastide services were cancelled at Fordingbridge where the parish church was left marooned. Once again the toll bridge area of Lymington took the brunt with water up to four feet deep in homes.

A disabled woman who was stranded for more than half an hour under Latchmoor Bridge was furious that there had been no warning of the floods.

“It’s a disgrace,” fumed 64-year old Patricia Taylor who was eventually pulled out by a fellow motorist.

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A CHANCE encounter 19 months ago led to Lymington couple Mike and Jane Finch, both members of the Salvation Army, with pastor Kenyan Evans Okoo and that was the start of a personal crusade to raise funds and provisions for street kids which the pastor takes into his care.

Mike and Jane have made two visits to see for themselves the appalling conditions that such children suffer in the remote part of Kenya. Mike used his skills as a quantity surveyor to help create a purpose-built centre for 140 boys.

Mike said: “The Lord is always opening doors for us.”

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AN emergency plan drawn up after mink were released from a Ringwood fur farm two years ago by animal rights activists meant that very few escaped into the wild when there was a repeat attack at the weekend.

“When the release took place we had a plan to follow and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and Food and their trappers came straight out,” said New Forest District Council’s emergency planning officer Simon Parker.

He was alerted at 5.30am that animal activists had cut wire fencing at Crow Hill Mink Farm, Burley Road, where some 700 minks were released from their cages.

All but 50 were recovered within hours.