Grand Hotel Missing Archway

A Memory of Lyndhurst.

My mother says the two white pillars at the entrance to the Grand Hotel once supported an archway.
During WW2 the Royal Navy housed sailors in the hotel who were bussed out each day. The bus was too tall to go under the archway and so they decided to blow up the arch. The resulting explosion shattered every window in the hotel and was heard all over the village!