May I ask if there are any plans to in some way commemorate Spring Pond, the source of the River Loddon, whose ancient site, finally dried up by the 1970s, is beneath the current front carpark to the course.
Gazette historian and local author, Arthur Attwood, wrote of the area, Worting Bottom, on floods between Worting and the town centre.
Briefly, the demise in his lifetime of the Loddon drainages and water needs of Basingstoke expansion sucked the river’s source springs dry forever.
Basingstoke-born, at 75 years old I have my own Spring Pond memories. Mid-1950s visits with Mum, Dad and two young sisters took place.
Dad never explained the significance then. By foot/bus route was down Station Hill, catch the red/cream bus at Basing Road, then Brook Street, Deep Lane, Worting Road to the White Hart. Up then West Ham Lane, past Worting’s northside houses to the pond.
There were no picnics on our short visits. Clearwater bubbled from the spring into the still quite sizeable pond area. Evidence of decline though apparent in t the marginally encroaching sallow willows.
A final visit took us instead up Buckskin Lane. Close to the road on Buckskin Farm were some similar-looking ponds.
I was later told these were filled by winter weather and once washed or watered livestock before piped water to troughs. Their location?
Remember the not-too-distant Buckskin floods!
Roger Bailey
Doswell Way,
South View
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