From Our Files: Bus roof torn off... bombing range plan... hospital staff strike
75 YEARS AGO
A MOTOR-COACH and an Austin 12hp private cat collided at Fernhill Cross Roads, New Milton, on Wednesday afternoon. Six people were taken to Boscombe Hospital, while six others were treated for superficial cuts and bruises.
After the collision, the motor coach ran up an embankment, struck an oak tree, which knocked the bottom part of its engine out, and overturned on its side in the road, the 15 passengers being trapped until a portion of the roof was hacked away. The car was spun round in the road and crashed into a lamp standard, which it knocked askew.
Fortunately, there were no very serious injuries. It is miraculous that a number of the people concerned were not killed outright.
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MEMBERS of Lymington Growmore Club listened with great interest to what is expected of Hampshire farmers in the Government’s four year plan, as outlined by Mr T. Wannop Williamson, the County’s Agricultural Executive Officer.
He gave an excellent background of the position of the world’s shortage of food, including the loss of good soil by erosion and other causes and the very slow increase to replace it by reclamation, the increase in the world population by 40 million every three years and the demand for improvement in the standard of living abroad.
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LYMINGTON Borough Council stated that they had received advance information that there is a proposal to establish a practice bombing range at Needs Oar at the mouth of Beaulieu river, but did not feel that this proposal calls for comment from the Council, and the Air Ministry have been referred to the New Forest Rural District.
50 YEARS AGO
ONE of the Brockenhurst Sixth Form College students who was travelling on the upper deck of the bus which had its roof ripped off on Wednesday, and suffered head injuries, was due to undergo an operation in the neurological unit of Southampton General Hospital on Thursday afternoon.
The other students who were on the upper deck, when the roof was torn off by the London-Bournemouth line railway bridge over the Sway-Brockenhurst road, had extraordinary escapes from serious injury.
In all there were over 60 passengers on the bus, and, following the accident, 13 of them were taken by ambulances and cars to hospital at Lymington and Southampton.
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A SUGGESTION by the New Milton Chamber of Trade that one of the town’s existing car parks might be leased or sold to specialist contractors for the purpose of building a multi-storey car park, has been turned down by Lymington Council’s Highways Committee. But arising out of the proposal, a special sub-committee has been appointed to act quickly to buy any suitable land that becomes available.
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INDUSTRIAL action throughout the country by hospital ancillary staff began on Thursday, and will continue for an indefinite period. A statement issued by Southampton University Hospitals on the dispute notes that “without the contribution of the ancillary staff the work of a hospital would grind to a halt . . . If the dispute became such that the unions felt obliged to demand a total withdrawal of labour, there would be not alternative but for the hospitals to close altogether.
25 YEARS AGO
A POPULAR nurse who delivered well over 1,000 babies from New Milton, Lymington and Brockenhurst has died at the age of 81. In her 17 years at the Grove Maternity Hospital in Barton, Vera Fagan had spent eight years as night sister and eight as matron.
"She never married," said her niece, Margaret Mortimer. "She gave her whole life to nursing and looking after other people."
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NEW FOREST commoners want £350,000 from the Forestry Commission to help them over the current financial crisis. If the Forestry Commission refuse to hand over the cash, which commoners say should come out of the £1.4-m. profit from caravan sites, a few are angrily threatening to block site entrances at Easter when over 2,000 caravans are expected.
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OBJECTION is being made by Lymington Harbour Commissioners to a proposal by English Nature for a new Special Area of Conservation (SAC) which would include the harbour entrance and main navigation channel.
Colin Wise, the Commissioners’ chief executive said at their meeting that it was very evident that English Nature “doesn’t know what goes on in our harbour”, and suggested that to include the main channel was like trying to make a motorway a Site of Special Scientific Interest. “This is the main route out of Lymington to Yarmouth.
