From Our Files: Restaurant attack...farm values drop...bowlers vs park users
Then & Now (with St Barbe Museum + Gallery): The Grand Marine Hotel & Barton Chase, Barton, circa 1940
The Grand Marine Hotel in Barton on Sea was established in 1910 as a purpose-built seaside hotel on Marine Drive.
During the First World War it served as a military convalescent home, initially for Indian soldiers and later for British and Commonwealth troops.
Post-war it operated as a guest house called Barton Chase under the Co-operative Holidays Association. In its final years the building functioned as a youth hostel and later as a nightclub. The structure was demolished in the early 1990s making way for the modern Barton Chase residential development.
50 YEARS AGO
A wife’s celebratory birthday celebration meal in a Chinese restaurant ended with her complaining husband being chased out bleeding profusely from a head wound after he was attacked by two waiters brandishing a meat cleaver.
The story was told at Lymington Magistrates’ Court where it was stated “all hell was let loose” at the Lotus Chinese restaurant in Old Milton Road, New Milton after the man complained that the meal was inedible, and refused to pay the full bill.
He was then hit over the head with a chair and a sauce bottle and kicked by waiters. But it was the man who found himself before magistrates charged with breach of the peace. He was bound over in the sum of £100 and fined £25.
The court heard that he had been grabbed by the restaurant manager to stop him leaving. He then fought his way out of the restaurant but went back in to continue the fight.
* * * * *
Owners of land at Hythe with a sewage polluted stream running through it have agreed to the council fencing it off.
New Forest District Council’s health committee were told that the banks of the stream near the sewer overflow at the rear of 36 and 38 Fulmer Drive were polluted.
The committee was told the new Dibden Purlieu sewerage system would relieve pressure on existing sewers at Frost Lane which are “grossly overloaded”.
Fencing would act as a deterrent to children playing in the area.
* * * * *
Average selling prices of farmland fell by more than 40 percent in the 12 months since April according to a report of the Country Landowners Association.
Since February the average selling price for land with vacant possession was £545 an acre compared with £779 in the corresponding months of 1974.
25 YEARS AGO
“Unless you put a cage over one or the other you are not going to stop it,” declared New Milton Town Council’s clerk Dick Waterman referring to on-going clashes between elderly bowlers and youths in the skate park.
As the A&T previously reported, bowlers were pelted with eggs by skaters. The two have now been asked not to antagonise each other.
“The situation cannot and must not be allowed to fester,” said Goff Beck who likened the saga to a boxing match with the bowlers in the red corner and the skaters in the blue.
* * * * *
A Milford-on-Sea man who tried to gas himself and his Alzheimer’s suffering wife because he feared social services would withdraw help has walked free from court after admitting attempted murder.
Mr Justice Turner told him that his actions had been “morally indefensible although humanly very understandable”.
The court had heard that the man could not “bear to see his wife suffering and could not bear to live without her”.
He looked after his wife who could not speak, or feed herself with social services help. But he had been told that unless he agreed to a hoist being used to lift her from her bed, it would be withdrawn.
“Out of his mind with worry,” he tried to kill her and himself but a neighbour realised what was going on and saved them. The judge told him that the case should never have come to court.
* * * * *
Highcliffe Residents Association have voted against a permanent building on the clifftop as a replacement for the old Crows Nest which burnt down.
Chairman Denis Osgood said the clifftop was open space and should be protected. He was also against plans for the new building to have an drinks licence, saying: “It would mean it was a pub, and I don’t really think we want that situation up there.”