by Ray George
On the occasion of John Dixon retirement as coordinator of the road repair teams after 16 years, new residents may be interested in how we got here.
When the estate was built, the usual practice, quite different from today, was for the developer not to make up the roads. This applied to Ethelburt Avenue and Leaside Way. It was expected that the Local Authority would soon make up the roads and recover the cost from the frontagers. The Council prepared schemes for Ethelburt Avenue but none was agreed. The war came along and stopped this programme. Leaside Way did get made up in 1955. Ethelburt Avenue was placed on the priority list in 1963. The reorganisation of local government in 1973 meant that highways became a responsibility of Hampshire County Council. Eventually, Ethelburt Avenue moved from being a priority to make up, to a quaint anachronism.
As soon as HCERA was formed, it had to confront what to do about the terrible state of Ethelburt Avenue and established an Ethelbert Avenue Repair Fund Sub-Committee. A questionnaire dated 1st March 1995 established that there was very little support for the road to be tarmacked. One famous voice of dissent was the artist Peter Foukes who wanted the road made up to adoptable standards. A meeting at the Bassett Green Community Centre, Leaside Way [beside the Stoneham Arms, (The Co-op) but now demolished] on 26 July 1995 overwhelmingly supported a proposal for a company to scarify, break up large stones, mix with limestone scalpings as needed, then put a layer of path gravel on top and compact. They would also lay a strip of tarmac at each end. A pledge of £300 was sought from each house, which soon exceeded the target. A separate bank account HCERA No. 2 was opened to receive the money and when the amount needed was received, HCERA contracted for the work, which commenced in October 1995. Two residents, John Scoates and Maurice Drake used a metal detector to discover the gratings of buried rainwater gullies, not seen for many years, which needed to be dug out. And then it rained on the new surface.
[To be continued]