Netley Abbey, the Hospital 1908

Bursledon Bridge

This picture is of the two Bursledon bridges over the River Hamble - the A27 road bridge in the foreground and the rail bridge behind it. Sarisbury Green is further up to the right on the A27 at the top of the hill. The photo is taken from the Bursledon side of the river loooking over towards Swanwick Shore, Lower Swanwick.

Bursledon Railway bridge

This picture is of the railway bridge over the Hamble, looking up stream from the road bridge which carried the A27 over the river. A little way to the right of where this picture was taken was the Red Lion Inn.
I remember watching steam trains crossing the bridge on trains from Brighton/Portsmouth to Salisbury/Bristol in the early 1960's. Local trains were Diesel units - the line not being electrified until much later.
Now there is a third bridge - beyond the railway bridge - which carries the M27 over the river!

Bursledon, The Hospital

I do not think this ever was a hospital in the usual sense.  I am pretty sure it was a house called Brixedene (Brixedone?) in Blundell Lane, owned and lived in by a family called Thistlethwaite. During the war it was a children's home, although I do not know anything about who it was run by and I think after the war, perhaps after the introduction of the NHS in 1948, it was taken over and used as a convalescent home with some connection to the Royal South Hants Hospital. I may not have all the facts right, but one thing I do know - there was never a hospital in Bursledon. Any hospital treatment meant a trek into Southampton to the South Hants Hospital - in St Mary's I think.

Houseboats in the picture of Bursledon Bridge

In the picture are several houseboats moored up to the bank on the LHS of the picture; I used to live on the large white motor torpedo boat (originally called 'Hippocampus') when she was moved from the River Hamble to the River Itchen in 1974; I renamed her 'Whimsical Macgoffley'. She was built in Cowes at the J. Samual White Shipyard, launched in 1944, and was one of six MTBs used by the Polish Navy. (Her number was S-8 during WW2 and she was eventually returned to the RN as HMTB 427 at the end of the war). She was sold by the Admiralty in 1950 and as far as I know was moved to the berth near Bursledon Bridge at that time until 1974 when she was moved to the River Itchen, and moored next to the Railway Bridge in Priory Road, St. Denys until 1990 when she was scrapped. I have discovered most of her wartime history but would like to know anything about her when moored on the River Hamble.
One of the other six Polish boats, S-10, was, for a time (1954/5) moored downstream and named 'M.Y. Taifun'; she had been used in the film 'The Ship that died of Shame', starring George Baker, Richard Attenborough, Bill Owen and Virginia McKenna and was up for sale. She eventually ended up in the Mediterranean and used for smuggling; the skipper being the brother of the comedien Jimmy Edwards, Hugh Edwards. She foundered off the North African coast and was lost during a smuggling trip in 1958.
Any information, stories or memories of either of these boats on the River Hamble, would be most welcome.