A series of staged shots from a photograph album possibly compiled by 4/386 Major Henry Masterton Clark depict the work of the ambulance service at the No1 New Zealand General Hospital, Brockenhurst.
The first photo depicts the wounded soldier arriving at Brockenhurst Train station and being loaded onto an ambulance. The woman in uniform next to the officer is a member of the British Women’s Auxiliary Service and one of its functions was the drive ambulances in non-combat areas to release manpower.
The ambulance is then driven to the Ambulance Station which was located across from the main hospital headquarters entrance where patients were unloaded onto one of the wards or then moved to one of the many satellite sites such as Balmer Lawn or Forest Lodge.
You can find out more about the activities, sites and stories associated with the hospital by clicking here: No.1 New Zealand General Hospital
A series of aerial photographs taken in 1944 of Park Farm heavy anti-aircraft site. The aerial views also show parts of Needs Ore (aka Needs Oar) Advanced Landing Ground, including some of the hangers, sections of runway and numerous Typhoons parked on the dispersal’s.
If you look closely at the four photos of the Anti-Aircraft site you will see that the first two were taken earlier than the second two and they show the anti-aircraft just after construction; you can clearly see the guns and other structures associated with the site. The last two show the same site a few days later when camouflage has been added to disguise the site from the air. If you look closely at both sets of photos you might realise that what looks like a hedge is actually the camouflaged tents for the men manning the guns, you might also notice the ponies or cows grazing in the same field as the guns.
Film Footage: Following the links under the Video tab, to the right.
One of the features on this HAA gun site, and on all HAA gun sites, would have been a Vickers Predictor.
There is also some film footage of a major television outside broadcast showing viewers the workings of an anti-aircraft battery carried out in London.
There is also some amazing footage of the 3.7inch HAA guns against V1 Flying Bombs.
Prepared in 1943 and opened in April 1944, Needs Oar along with several other sites in the New Forest was selected for the construction of temporary Advanced Landing Ground airfield which would support the planned Allied invasion of Europe. It was very busy for seveal months until the advancement of the allies across Europe negated its need in later 1944.
The New Forest Remembers Project volunteers under the guidance of Bournemouth Archaeology excavated one of the Park Farm gun pits during the Festival of British Archaeology 2013 and the excavation report can be read here.
You can find out more about the New Forest’s vital role in D-Day from Mulberry Harbour, to holding camps, road widening, advanced landing grounds, PLUTO and Embarkation by visiting our main page on D-Day in the New Forest.
All photos are credit: Lord Montagu of Beaulieu
In 2018-19 we revisited Park Farm, but this time explore a Bronze Age feature. Discover more here.
A short film from British Pathe shows how the RAF were attempting to deal with the challenges of relaying messages from planes in flight back to base over longer distances than radio allowed in 1939. The answer was the homing pigeon; ‘Real wings to the aid of mechanical ones’! The plane shown is a Short Singapore, these were flown by 240 squadron which was reformed in 1937.
A Film from British Pathe: Calshot – Aka Training Pigeons For The Raf (1939)
FILM ID:1003.3
Description: Pigeons being tested by the RAF in Calshot, Hampshire.
L/S’s of a basket with pigeons being loaded onto and RAF (Royal Airforce) Short Singapore flying boat. Good L/S’s of the large aeroplane taking to the sky from Southampton Water. M/S’s of a man releasing a homing pigeon from the cockpit of the aircraft. L/S’s and M/S’s of an RAF man collecting the pigeon after it has returned home, he holds it upside down and then and takes the message attached to it’s ring off.
This map was handed to the project in July 2013 and we have been working to decipher all the information from it.
The map is a German Luftwaffe Map surveyed in 1936 and updated in 1938, it is slightly worse for wear and we are now working to conserve it. The map in itself is of interest, but closer scrutiny reveals additional information and another story reveals itself.
There is a small message scrawled on the back of the map ‘Souvenir German Map picked up in Caen France’
On the front somebody has drawn on a dotted line crossing from Gosport to Normandy and then to Caen, skirting Rouen, before heading north east across the Belgian border to Ghent. Along the way there are a few ‘X’s marked on the map.
It is possible to start hypothesising a few bits of information form the map. Working under the assumption that the X marks an engagement area rather than an overnight stay or base due to the number and spread. The author was probably British landing on Gold beach on the 6th June 1944, involved in another engagement before moving to Caen where the map was aquired and then follows the British advancement to Ghent arriving after its liberation on 6th September 1944.
Do you know differently? we would welcome comments and thoughts on this map and the information it contains
You can find out more about the New Forest’s vital role in D-Day from Mulberry Harbour, to holding camps, road widening, advanced landing grounds, PLUTO and Embarkation by visiting our main page on D-Day in the New Forest.
Still surviving today is one of the WWII PLUTO fuel storage sites, within the ExxonMobil Fawley refinery site. Another storage site was demolished around 2008.
Seen on historic aerial photographs to the north north east of the Badminston Common was: “A large turf-covered subrectangular structure surrounded by an earthwork perimeter bank, together with associated buildings” (NMP data). This site was once the location of buried storage tanks of fuel for PLUTO (Pipe Line Under The Ocean). The site was also surrounded by anti-aircraft gun positions.
You can find out more about the other D Day holding camps, and related activities dealing with Mulberry Harbours and Embarkation by visiting our main page on D-Day in the New Forest.
Alongside the numerous bomb craters various elements of the old Ashley Walk Bombing Range still survive today and echoes of past activity can be seen when walking in the area.
The above photo was taken in 1975. It shows the concrete circle that formed the centre of a large ‘Bulls Eye’ target. Around this point were multiple circles of broken earthen banks forming the overall ‘Bulls Eye’ target. This feature is still marked on modern OS maps of the area. The addition to the circle of the ‘apron’ was for Wall Target No.2.
The concrete was removed in 1991, though you can still obtain a sense of scale on the ground as it survives now as a cropmark. The concentric circles that that formed this target are still visible as ditched lines with regular mounds.
A large amount of other targets, marks and letters survive either as cropmarks or as chalk marks.
Read more about the other sites that can still be seen at Ashley Walk:
At the end of the Second World War, Calshot Castle returned to duty as an active air base, housing two squadrons of Sunderland flying boats which took part in the Berlin airlift of 1948, before being passed across to Maintenance Command in 1953. The Southampton Harbour Board built a coastguard lookout tower at the castle in 1952, and the following year they began to construct a signal station tower on top of the keep, complete with radar and radio facilities, which opened in 1958. From 1954 – 1967 the area outside the castle was used to store two of the three Saunders-Roe Princess Flying Boats that were prototypes from an abandoned project to build the largest all-metal flying boat, in fact, one of the largest aircraft ever conceived at the time (You can read more about these planes here) .
The RAF station at Calshot was finally closed in 1961.
Hampshire County Council leased the site from the Crown Estates in 1964; the castle itself passed into the guardianship of the state, with the hangars being used as an activity centre which is still the case today. A Royal National Lifeboat Institution station opened in 1971 alongside the castle, with a 130-foot (40 m)-tall replacement coastguard tower constructed two years later.
English Heritage took over management of the castle in 1983, and stripped back 20th-century additions to present it as it might have appeared in 1914, including demolishing the old signal station tower.
However this film from British Pathe of Southampton Radar in 1960 shows the castle as it was in 1960.
FILM ID:101.04
Summary: Radar station at Calshot, Southampton alerts a dredger to clear the way for the SS America.
Description: M/S of the entrance of a radar station housed in a castle in Calshot, Southampton as a sailor walks through the stone archway. C/Us of a slit window and a round ornament on the castle wall. M/S of the castle (the commentator says it was built in Henry VIII’s time), tilt up to show a modern building on top of it and the radar scanner whirling round above it. L/S of radar station on the edge of the harbour, with a two of the Princess flying boats parked behind it. L/S of the Southampton estuary, with the SS America steaming through towards us.
The New Forest Community Archaeologist was re-contact by Mr Davis the other day:
“Four to five years ago I had some correspondence with the New Forest Community Archaeologist regarding a (motor) hill climb in the early post WW2 years organised by Southampton Car Club. Unfortunately my efforts to find more information petered out. However, I recently acquired a book “Motorsport Explorer” giving details of all current & historic motor sport venues in the UK including Cockley Hill.” Mr Davis
The book Mr Davis talks about gives the following description of one of the hill climb held at Cockley Hill:
“The hill was 590yd (539m) of winding, loose-covered gravel set among trees. the route over the Downs to an RAF site, which at the time contained quantities of unused, unexploded bombs. On 12 May 1946 the Southampton Motor Club organised their first speed event on this dusty hill. Facilities were primitive and timing was rudimentary, but the natural banks provided the well-behaved spectators with a good view of the course.
The meeting, confined to touring and saloon cars, was efficiently organised with all entries having three runs, the individual runs to count towards an aggregate award. Ken Hutchison, driving the pre-war prototype Allard (CLK5), set BTD in 29.8sec. The second event was held the following year in May 1947. Leslie Allard set BTD in the special sports Allard (HLF 60I), with 28.6sec.” (Hunt, 2012)
We got in touch with the Guy Griffiths Collection and they very kindly provided a couple of photographs and the 1947 event program, which shows the second event took place on 10 Aug (not May) 1947.
The following paper was presented at the New Forest Knowledge Conference 2017 entitled: New Forest Historical Research and Archaeology: who’s doing it? Below you will find the abstract of the paper and a video of the paper given if permission to film it was given by the speaker.
Speaker:
Dr Richard Massey, Cotswold Archaeology
Abstract
Located on a former military site on the western margins of the New Forest, at Bransgore, and overlooking the Avon valley, the Heatherstone Grange cemetery originated as a group of four Early Bronze Age round barrows and associated burials, one of which contained a beaker vessel. The site was excavated by Cotswold Archaeology in late 2015, following an earlier evaluation.
The reuse of this burial site after an interval of several centuries included the insertion of 40 cremation burials and cremation‐related deposits in one of the barrows, with further, more scattered burials recorded in other parts of the site. The remains of 36 pottery vessels were recovered, most of which were associated with cremation‐related deposits, either as burial urns or accessory vessels. These included a group of 17 well‐preserved urns of the Deverel‐Rimbury tradition, which were unusual for their remarkable range of size, form and decoration. An initial group of radiocarbon dates has indicated a date range for these of c. 1500‐1300 BC. These vessels displayed clear cultural affinities with examples from the Stour Valley and Cranborne Chase to the west, and are closely paralleled by examples from major excavated cemeteries of this period.
Cremated bone samples were small, and in most cases their condition did not permit detailed assessment. A significant proportion of deposits contained only charcoal‐rich pyre debris, without cremated bone.
The remains of a ditched enclosure and pits in the south of the site appear to represent evidence of a contemporary domestic settlement.
British Pathe have a short film showing the members of the 1931 Great Britain Ryder Cup team practicing at Brokenhurst Manor Golf Club, Brockenhurst.
The Ryder Cup is a biennial men’s golf competition between teams from Europe and the United States. The competition is contested every two years with the venue alternating between courses in the United States and Europe. The Ryder Cup is named after the English businessman Samuel Ryder who donated the trophy.
Originally contested between Great Britain and the United States, the first official Ryder Cup took place in 1927 in the US. The home team won the first five contests including the third Ryder Cup in 1931 for which we see Team GB practicing in the film. prior to 1931 Ryder Cup 4 trial matches were played to select the Great Britain team, which also saw the use of the new American sized ball. The British team sailed on June 10 following a farewell dinner the previous evening
Following the competition’s resumption after the Second World War, and repeated American dominance eventually led to a decision to extend the representation of “Great Britain and Ireland” to include continental Europe from 1979.
Practice Makes Perfect 1931
FILM ID:771.07 “Brockenhurst. Practice makes Perfect! Our Ryder Cup team show fine form with the American ball, with which they will have to play in great golf ‘Test’.”
Description: Brockenhurst, Hampshire. Members of the British Ryder Cup golf team practice their swings. Various shots of golfers driving off and playing out on the course. One player puts in a long distance putt.
We are unable to identify the players in the film though we know the final team – any information gratefully received.
Team Great Britain
Charles Whitcombe – captain 35 (England)
Archie Compston 38 (England)
Bill Davies 39 (England)
George Duncan 47 (Scotland)
Syd Easterbrook 26 (England)
Arthur Havers 33 (England)
Bert Hodson 25 (Wales)
Abe Mitchell 44 (England)
Fred Robson 46 (England)
Ernest Whitcombe 40 (England)
