Mudeford Sandbank News
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Where tme stands stl ISSN 1462-8503 MUDEFORD SANDBANK NEWS Issue No. 10 Summer 2005 £1.20 Beach-hut prices fall on Mudeford Sandbank One shore beyond desire On March 18th at auction (auctioneers Symonds and Sampson) a sleeping beach hut failed to meet its reserve of £80,000, confirming local knowledge that sales had stalled on the beach. Vendors have been keen to A frenzy of articles on the It is apparent from nearly sell this Spring because the sudden price slump appeared two-dozen “For Sale” signs progressive transfer fees pay- in the local media and the before the Easter holiday that able to Christchurch Council national press and even an although vendors are anxious rose on April 1st for a hut overseas newspaper just be- to sell, buyers are currently from £15,000 to £21,000 as fore Easter. Sales may yet few and far between. This is expected. Also licence fees recover if demand is restored. most unusual. have spiraled to close on But this would have to be in £2,000 per hut and although the face of vendors passing the beach has never looked on the increasing transfer fees better, the old cheap and in- to buyers. Historically, about formal ways are being sup- a dozen huts have changed planted by a new ruthless hands on average each year profit-led and cost-driven over the last 30 years. There worldliness. has been something of a (www.msbnews.co.uk) Page 1 Summer 2005 buying frenzy in the last (even bad publicity over fal- hut. The simplicity of beach dozen years, despite the ling prices) has brought a hut-life is a more enchanting rising prices. new clutch of Easter weekend prospect than that of hut-less The 354 huts contribute visitors looking for an appar- financial excess. Honestly. £630,000 in annual licence ent bargain. This is a peren- I told would-be buyers of our fees. In 2002/3 the transfer nial phenomenon it seems to hut not to buy expecting fee windfall to the council me. prices to continue to increase, was £109,000. In 2004/05 it It is not just waves that en- but to give themselves and was £239,000. In 2005/6 it croach upon the shore. their children a sanctuary should be at least £309,000 in It is an exiting time, not least from the world. I believed the council’s favour. The because having sold my fam- they would be right to buy, following year the rate (if not ily’s sleeping-hut (after three for that reason. the total as it depends on the quarters of a century of occu- They probably were right to number of huts being sold or pation), admittedly at what buy in, for whilst the hut- transferred) should increase has been “the top of the mar- strewn sea-front at nearby by half again. The council ket”, Bournemouth has 100 arrests want to gradually achieve a on average each year, our 50% share of a hut’s profit own Mudeford Sandbank has on sale because it is the had perhaps one arrest in the (council owned) land that has last 100 years! the real value. Oh! for the simple happy Also any recovery in sales childish days of my youth, in would have to be in the face a sanctuary untroubled by the of uncertainties over the grasping hand of greed, fear beach lease from Bourne- of being displaced by ruthless mouth Council which is due market forces and troubling for renewal in either 2029 (or council policies. 2036 depending on who you I am no longer “Beach Hut But thank you to everyone speak to!) Man”. My plan to buy back who has made the decision to But the fact that the huts into a smaller hut more suited sell last August less painful have become a “golden to my needs and based on my than it might otherwise have goose” is an assurance that sense of what I or my family been. I currently may be the huts will continue to would be prepared to pay is found (at least out of season) colonise this beach, as the still in question. in a hired hut at the end of the values have been rising at Objectively I would not be beach plotting my comeback. least until the 2005 “correc- able to recommend “buy” or Due to council policies even tion”. “sell” to anyone else even if I that temporary solution is un- On the other hand, it is still a have just more than doubled der threat of becoming be- paradise down here. And will my new paper investments in yond my justifiable reach. be, people know, for genera- six months using the Ameri- Absence has made the heart tions to come. can NASDAQ stock market. grow fonder. I recommend a But efforts to reduce the (AAPL and PIXR if you must trial separation for anyone, transfer fees when passed know). however beautiful the “part- down within families, if suc- Distance from poverty does ner” you have. As Hart Crane cessful, may reduce supply lend enchantment to the view, wrote, in his poem The even more and force prices but it is a cold wind that Bridge, “the best shore is one upwards again. Publicity blows if you do not have a beyond our desire.” (www.msbnews.co.uk) Page 2 Summer 2005 (www.msbnews.co.uk) Page 3 Summer 2005 The Water Mill Listen to the Water Mill through the live-long day. How the creaking of the wheel, wears the hours away, Languidly the water glides, useless on and still Never coming back again to the Water Mill And the proverb haunts my mind, like a spell that’s cast “The Mill will never grind with the water that has passed” Take this lesson to yourselves loving hearts and true Golden years are fleeting by, youth is fleeting too, Learn to make the most of life, lose no honest way, Time will never bring thee back chances swept away “Leave no tender word unsaid, love while life shall last” “The Mill will never grind with the water that has passed” Work while yet the daylight shines, men of strength and will, Never does the streamlet glide useless by the mill; Wait not till tomorrow’s sun beams upon the way, All that thou cans’t call thine own, lies in this today! Power, intellect and strength may not, cannot last, “The Mill will never grind with the water that has passed” Oh! the wasted hours of life that has drifted by All the good we might have done – lost – without a sigh! Love that we might once have saved, by a single word Thoughts conceived but never penned, perishing unheard Take this lesson to your heart, take, oh! hold it fast! “The Mill will never grind with the water that has passed” From the German, (rescued and recycled from the Council tip by your editor) Printed in memory of Mr J Prosser who died in 2004 who was, introduced to the area by a Mr Luckett (who was given the pick of the beach to build a beach hut in 1947) and remembered by his son, a friend of this newspaper over many years [Ed] (www.msbnews.co.uk) Page 4 Summer 2005 The Forgotten Regency Resort Visit The Splendid Marine Village Of Muddiford (*** Also Known As Sandhills, Sandford and Summerford ***) The French Revolution and subsequent Napoleonic Wars ended the English upper class fashion for the European Grand Tour and holidays at continental spas. Instead, the new ‘sea-bathing’ resorts of Brighton, Lyme and Wey- mouth became fashionable Regency-era "watering- places," growing within a generation into popular Highcliffe was not adopted as for the European cultural tourism destinations. One a village name until 1892, the ‘Grand Tour’ and holidays at resort however, despite local hamlets being known continental spas, which of- meeting the basic require- before that as Chuton, New- fered mineral-rich water to ments for a fashionable town, and Slop Pond. On the drink and sometimes, mud- Georgian-Regency resort, other hand, names such as baths. and enjoying patronage from Mude or Muddiford had the the nation’s elite, never grew In England, inland spas, no- advantage for the fashionable to become a household name tably Bath, were long estab- set of discouraging strangers .... lished on the Continental and keeping the resort exclu- model of health spas like perhaps it was due to its sive, away from the hoi pol- Lourdes. George II's old having such an unpromising loi. In fact, the district's other Prime Minister, Pitt the Elder, name that the Christchurch name was Sandhills, after the for instance in 1768 retreated district of Mudeford together large dunes stretching along to Bath suffering from the with neighbouring Highcliffe, the shore. flying gout — the age's polite in what was then southwest label for mental-health prob- Hampshire never grew to be Wars with France and other lems. The new English sea- another Brighton or Margate. European countries over the side resorts would come into "Muddyford," as it was pre- Colonies, then the French popularity during the heyday viously, does not sound as if Revolution and subsequent of the up-and-coming Prince it has much of a beach, which ‘Terror’ of the 1790s, and Regent, in the years between may have made it uninviting finally the Napoleonic Wars the Storming Of The Bastille to the public who began to combined to put an end the in 1789 and Waterloo in frequent seaside resorts when English upper class fashion 1815, which ended the the railway age arrived.