In Days Gone By with John Dowling

MADAME Pavlova, the Russian dancer, with a lady friend and three maids, left London for Bexhill in a motor-car on Saturday night. Going up Tubs Hill, Sevenoaks, the chauffeur got out to attend to his engine, and the car suddenly burst into flame. The entire front of the motor was consumed, and the ladies had a narrow escape, the tapestry almost at once catching fire. Sergeant Paramor stopped the London to Hastings mail and borrowed a chemical fire extinguisher. This saved part of the motor. Madame Pavlova was taken to an hotel and came on to Bexhill on Sunday morning.

AN asset of untold value to her cause, Miss Muriel Matters, the Australian Suffragist, delighted a large gathering at the Victoria Hall on Wednesday afternoon when, to use her own words, she dealt with “the position of women as mothers, as wives and as workers.”

1961

THE keen and progressive building industry in Bexhill has this year recruited the highest-ever total of apprentices to its ranks – a real feather in the cap of the Local Joint Apprenticeship Committee governing the Bexhill area – and on Monday at the De La Warr Pavilion, before a large number of parents and employers, nine young men signed indenture forms to train in specific branches of the industry.

1971

THERE was a heavy thud and a sharp concussion which seemed to catch watchers full in the chest, then 1,000 tons of steel and concrete lurched, appeared to hang motionless and ponderously keeled over with a roar to be lost in swirling clouds of black dust.

The men who struck Crowhurst viaduct and the Glyne Gap gasworks chimney off the map was at work again.

Neville Baber, the Bexhill-born explosives expert, was

leaving the town another of his visiting cards by taking the 60ft high batching plant at the gasworks off the horizon.

THE De La Warr Pavilion Lift Appeal Fund was given a boost on Sunday when 20 pupils from the Grammar School and the Down County Secondary School took part in a non-stop sponsored climb of the pavilion staircase.

1981

A CAPACITY crowd of snooker enthusiasts were held spellbound at the De La Warr Pavilion on Saturday night when world snooker champion Steve Davis and former champion John Spencer played out a nine-frame Philishave world snooker match which, if lacking somewhat in competitive “needle,” enabled the players to demonstrate their wizardry in a relaxed atmosphere which helped make the evening an enjoyable social, as well as sporting, treat.

A 30-YEAR-OLD prisoner serving a 10-month sentence at Northeye Prison escaped through a hole in the wire on Monday afternoon.

1991

SIDLEY youngsters who have offered to restore the controversial shelter on Sidley green and then “police” it should be given the materials and encouraged to get on with it, say councillors. Members of Rother’s recreation and tourism committee claimed on Tuesday that vandalism and violence were running out of control there.

THE Bexhill Bypass Action Group will fight all the way if the controversial Red Route is chosen. Events took a step nearer the Red Route when county councillors voted this week to support it in principle, provided modifications are incorporated.

2001

A PLAGUE of rats in Egerton Park is keeping parents and toddlers away. They have been spotted by many people in recent weeks in bushes and the children’s sandpit. It is believed they swim from the island in the middle of the lake and get under the park fence before making for the sand. Now park users are being asked not to feed the birds and to take picnic leftovers home with them.

COMPLETION of Bexhill Station’s massive refurbishment programme reached another stage this week when some of the plastic covering in which it has been encased was removed. A Railtrack spokesman said the remaining work was due to finish around the end of June.