Preserving the past and heritage of this wonderful village at the heart of the New Forest
Fancy That!
Many events deserve some explaining - some are strange, others odd, and yet more in danger of being forgotten.
By car and train
In the late 1970’s Brockenhurst station took on a new role – as a Motorail terminus. This system stretched across the UK. Drivers and passengers to put their cars on the train (they used a separate carriage) to travel long distances quickly. The other end of the Brockenhurst route was at Stirling in Scotland (via London Olympia). Not everything went smoothly. After every journey windscreen repairers would sort out the inevitable cars which had their glass smashed by flying stones from the track as they sped across the country.
what3words: ///premises.plotter.seemingly
Hitler stopped its completion
Halfway down Brookley Road is the ‘Midland Bank building’, nowadays known for the village fish and chip shop. The building is unfinished and has been for 80 years. It was intended to be three bays when construction began in 1938. Only two, the left hand side and the centre had been built by when war broke out and construction stopped. An oddity is that if you look at the unfinished end, you can see the chimney breast and fireplace which was intended for the first floor flat at that end of the building.
what3words; ///carry.rags.colleague
Local Gas
Brockenhurst had its own gas works. This wasn’t uncommon as gas for cooking, heating and lighting wasn’t found under the North Sea as now, but created by heating coal locally to produce methane. This was stored in large green ‘gasometers’. The Brockenhurst Gas Company was by the railway at the bottom end of Sway Road, then called ‘Wide Lane’. Horse and carts delivered coal from the sidings at the station. The operation was 24 hours, and the manager lived onsite in the 1920’s house still there.
what3words: ///feasting.glosses.monday
Brockenhurst's Badger
The Badger symbol used by the Village Hall, Parish Council and others, was drawn by Margaret Post as a promotional symbol of the Hall Committee and reproduced on mugs for fund raising.
Margaret Post was a French mistress at the Grammar School who also had a talent for art. She helped produce props for the school plays; she made the Donkey’s head for Bottom in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and, as a keen member of the W.I., she became involved in drama productions and the village pantomime.
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