| Hythe | ||||||||||||
| Hythe is a town on the west side of Southampton Water and is a part of Dibden Parish and its name means 'a landing place and one way of arriving here is by the Hythe Ferry which runs back and forth across the water to Southampton Town Quay to the pierhead .One advantage of coming this way is it gives the visitor a great opportunity to see some of the most famous ships in the world close up. nothing was more awe inspiring to me as a child than sitting in that small boat having a towering Queen Mary sailing past a few yards away, or to sail alongside the massive aircraft carrier USS Forrestal when she paid a courtesy call to Southampton in the early 1960s, (she was open to the public and I was given a treat and went on board).
Hythe pier was officially opened in 1881 but it was in 1922 that the electric train was used and this same train is still in use today taking passengers up and down the pier to the ferry. All of the great passenger liners sailed past the end of the pier to tie up in Southampton and Imperial Airways had a maintenance base here and you could see the Sunderland flying boats which were known as Empire Flying Boats take off for the far reaches of what was then the British Empire, carrying both passengers and mail for exotic sounding places.
To the eat of the pier was the British Powerboat Company and it was here that Miss Britain a famous powerboat was built by Hubert Scott Paine before WWII, and the boatyard was used in the war to build the motor torpedo boats and high speed launches for the RAF rescue service. Until recently the US Navy had a small base here next to the Dreamland Electric Blanket factory and mine sweepers were cocooned just off shore ready to be used during the cold war. Sadly these and the Dreamland factory are long gone.
The town and its waterside has seen many changes over the past fifty or so years, with the town centre becoming pedestrianised and new yacht marinas being built, the whole of the waterside has got new apartments and houses all around. The pubs are still numerous and most have nautical connections, but the Drummond Arms that stood opposite the pier and was named after a Scottish banker who live on one of the neighbouring estates, these estates were eventually sub divided to free the land for the giant Exxon Oil Refinery at nearby Fawley.
The town stands on the eastern edge of the New Forest and is full of hustle and bustle, Knightons once a stately home, a hundred and twenty years ago, and stood in the middle of the tow, is now the site of a modern supermarket. Between the Anchor and Hope and the hotel known as
'The Bridge' there was a road and where The Marsh (aptly named) is
situated there was a tunnel that ran from what is now the car park at
New Road to a point near the pier that joined up with a stream running
from the Hollybank Estate which in earlier times was a route used by
smugglers. The old cinema that stood at the bottom of South Street and
is now longer was once Gladstone House and here ther used to be roller
skating rink, THE SIGHTS YOU CAN SEE AT HYTHE
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