From our Files: ‘Pony romantics’...LSD smuggler...coastal costs...movie role
50 YEARS AGO
THE Earl of Malmesbury, until recently Official Verderer of the New Forest, has lashed out at “pony romantics” when he spoke in the House of Commons.
He was discussing a private members bill which seeks to establish a Farriers Registration Council, so that cruelty to horses caused by unskilled shoeing would be stopped.
Lord Newell said it was “absolutely necessary to stamp out the cruelty inflicted by ignorant people on horses and ponies.”
He said New Forest ponies which were bought as “pets” by the ignorance of purchasers was often “quite appalling”.
“Quite often it is not appreciated that if one owns a pony it is going to cost a certain amount of money.
“They think that the matter can begin and end with their having a paddock, or being able to turn the pony out into the Forest.”
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A 17-YEAR-OLD Highcliffe girl pleaded guilty to attempting to smuggle a microdot of LSD to a youth inside Borstal.
She had hidden it under a stamp of a letter she sent him. At magistrates’ court she pleaded guilty to possession of the drug.
A matron at the institution became suspicious when she read the convent educated girl’s postscript on the letter which read: “Do you collect stamps?”
She removed the stamp and found the drug. The girl’s father blamed the lapse on the teenage scene in Bournemouth saying: “It’s a terrible place for young people I would not recommend anyone live there.”
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IF planning permission were given to Hoburne Development Co to erect 960 dwellings on 101 acres of land bounded by the A35, Highcliffe Road and Hoburne Lane it would increase the population of Highcliffe by a fifth.
At a meeting of Highcliffe Citizens Association some members said the village needed more houses but others protested saying the doctors and schools could not cope.
One said: “We need to know that the service will cope. I do not think they will, they are already struggling.”
Another said Highcliffe could find itself with 300 extra children six years after the development being built adding: “Where are they going to go to school? Another one will have to be built.”
25 YEARS AGO
A MILFORD butcher who has won an award every year for his sausages since 1989 has come top in another competition.
David Gates, who runs The Butcher’s Shop, won first prize for his sausages in the Southern Butcher’s Association Sausage Competition 1999.
Mr Gates is also currently the National Sausage Winner.
Monk & Son fishmongers in the village also came runner-up in the joint Country Living magazine and Food from Britain annual awards.
Mr Monk and Mr Gates are pictured together with their prizes.
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ALL manner of activities have taken place on Milford village green over the years but on Monday a new sight was to be seen when over a hundred villagers joined in a line dancing routine.
This was part of the fun of the May Day celebrations. The line dancing spectacle was at the instigation of Dani Green whose troupe of 26 dancers aged between two and 13 drew applause with dancing.
The leading male role was taken by ‘Mr Indestructible” Karl Voller who, at the age of four, fell while attempting to feed his pet rabbit onto a metal spike which pierced his eye, going into his brain leaving him partially paralysed.
Four years later while playing with a cigarette lighter he was badly burnt. Recently he was involved in a car accident.
Despite such adversity, Karl entertained the May Day crowds with gusto.
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A PROGRAMME of coastal protection for Milford costing some £2.5 million, which it is hoped will also provide environmental improvements, is being drawn up by New Forest District Council.
A cost benefit analysis is currently being prepared for submission to the Ministry, and the council believes it has identified sufficient benefits for approval for a worthwhile improvement to Milford’s frontage.
Andrew Bradbury, New Forest District Council’s coastal projects manager had detailed the current problems with undermined timber groynes and piling degrading Portland rocks, a shifting sea wall and eroding beach with annual maintenance costs of around £100,000.
He said they had three options: do nothing; maintain the existing declining structures; or the one they were looking to do, improve the standard of protection.
Dr Bradbury said they were looking to recharge the whole of the beach, provide scour protection through the use of rocks of a higher grade, replace timber groynes with rock and carry out minor modifications to the sea wall.
But he warned that NFDC were not just looking at the cost of modifications but also at maintenance costs over the next half century and that the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, only had a finite amount of money for such schemes.
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A local WW2 hero who was dubbed “the man who shortened the war” has been invited to appear in a walk-on role in a $90 million Hollywood blockbuster.
David Balme, who lives in Lisle Court Road, Walhampton, has already flown to Malta to meet producers of the Universal Studios movie.
The feature film ‘U571’ takes the 1941 seizure of the German submarine by the British Royal Navy in the Atlantic and relocates it in the Mediterranean with an American crack team.
Dr David Lewis protested in parliament saying that it would be appropriate for Hollywood to give Mr Balme some sort of walk-on part.
Mr Balme, then Sub Lt in the navy, seized an Enigma decoding machine which proved crucial to cracking top secret messages sent by the Nazis.
The film stars Bill Paxton, Jon Bon Jovi, Harvey Keitel and Matthew McConnaughey.
