From Our Files: RAF station closes...a house divided...national park status
50 YEARS AGO
RAF Sopley closed down at 5pm on Friday last week after 34 years of service.
It was one of the smallest stations in the RAF and began in WWII as a secret radar station.
Sopley’s early work was to help the night fighters to find enemy intruders. The first mobile ground radar unit moved in at Sopley on Christmas day 1940.
The ceremony of closing down took place in the operation room and trumpeters sounded the last post.
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MR Roger King of Ringwood Road, Walkford, is a man with a problem, as he has received an electoral registration form from both Christchurch and Lyndhurst because since the boundary changes took place, half of his house is in the Borough of Christchurch.
The other half is in the New Forest.
“The kids sleep in Hampshire and we sleep in Dorset”, Mr King told the A&T.
He pays half his rates to each council but did not know what to do about the form as it is illegal to vote twice.
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A BAN on circuses featuring performing animals on council property will be called for at the next Christchurch council meeting by deputy mayor Cllr T Staniforth who has put the motion forward.
During discussion on the subject he was supported by Cllr Hodges who was asked by Cllr R Bruce if he was now going to “liberate his hamster”.
He replied that his hamster’s cage was 50 times bigger in size than in comparison to a lion’s cage.
Cllr Hodges said he also had two goldfish and a cat. “But I don’t put them in small cages and drag them round the country making them perform tricks.”
25 YEARS AGO
LES Cooper has mixed views on Brockenhurst village school. As a five-year-old he twice ran away from it, over the stile back to his home only to be returned straightaway by his father.
That was back in 1917 and on Thursday afternoon last week 87-year-old Les was back at school as guest of honour invited as one of the oldest living former pupils still living in the village.
He told pupils that he had been taught two things: “Cleanliness is next to Godliness” and “Manners cost nothing.”
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THE New Forest is to be given national park status. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott made the historic announcement on the 50th anniversary of the 1949 National Park and Access to the Countryside Act.
The news has provoked a mixed reaction across the Forest with its supporters welcoming greater protection and extra cash for the area, and its critics fearing that it could be a ‘Black Wednesday’ for commoners, as the news was announced on a Wednesday.
Environment groups which had campaigned for decades for the Forest to be designated national park status were delighted by the decision.
“A dream come true,” was the reaction of the chairman of the New Forest group of the Ramblers Association.
A spokesperson for the verderers said they would be watching to see that the New Forest acts of parliament retained intact saying: “There would be a tremendous fuss if the government repealed them.”
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A SELF-MADE millionaire who helped manage the family run holiday home business Riverside Park in Christchurch has died with 35 other British tourists when a coach plunged off a mountain road in South Africa.
Tony Sparrow, 63, has been hailed a hero who, although badly injured, used his body to protect his wife Jane, who survived with a broken femur.
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A NEW Forest resident lodged a complaint with the Environmental Health Service after discovering what appeared to be a beetle attached to a frozen Yorkshire pudding.
On closer examination the ‘beetle’ was found to be a piece of burnt food, therefore no further action was necessary.
