Baddesley Common this morning…nice lighting…
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Right, SO5 as was, now SO50 is technically part of our fine city…
If you have an interest in Beastleigh this is an excellent, albeit not prolific, account to follow.
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I don’t recognise Eastleigh from this picture. As the tweeter says, everything has changed.
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Fab pic. I can tell you with certainty that @SO5-4BW, @ericofarabia and I will recognise that as Eastleigh, and I guess that @scotty, as an old Barton Peveril inmate, will too. My recollection of the Junction Hotel being there is distinctly hazy, as I think it must have been demolished not long after that pic was taken. But the front of the station itself and the one-way system coming off the bridge to beautiful Bishopstoke are very clear memories even now, fifty years on.
Digging the cars in front of the station too. Austin Cambridge/Morris Oxford estate, Rover P6 and Vauxhall Cresta (I think - certain about the other two).
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Just about remember the Junction being there but it had gone by the time we started drinking.
Mind you Eastleigh was a bit of a beer desert then - certainly never went in the Home Tavern (opposite, just out of the picture, now Weatherspoons) too often. Or the Good Companions (Watneys), Grantham, Chamberlayne…
I think I went in most of those once or twice, but no more. Or never, in the case of the Good Companions. The Grantham did have the advantage that you could go in there wearing a Barton Peveril uniform and get served - given that the green blazer marked you out as being sixteen at the oldest, that was quite something.
Then there was the Golden Hind, possibly the worst of Eastleigh’s pubs at the time (a fantastic achievement), the Crown (which ran it a close second), the Eastleigh Hotel (favoured sixth-form lunchtime venue, now turned into flats) and the Cricketers (then, as now, a decent enough pub).
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You’re right about the Grantham - and pubs in general back then. ID cards - huh - if you had money and could see over the bar they’d serve you!
God the Golden Hind on Twyford Road - that really was awful
My dad worked for Pirellis, so I usually sneaked into their social club on Passfield. You’d generally get served in there, and they had a snooker room.
What was the Westmacott Inn behind the Home Tavern? Sort of round where Sainsburys is now? They also owned the George and Falcon in West Meon, the Hunters in Swanmore and the Cross Keys in Ropley. The food there was fantastic, think it was the phoenix or the golden something.
Golden Eagle?
Yes, that’s the one. 
I upset the landlord in there once. Playing in the Thursday night pool league for The Dorchester I was up first game against the landlord. He won the toss and asked me to break. I potted one off the break, cleared up and seven balled him. I thought he was going to cry.
“I fucking look forward to this all week and I never even got a shot”
“You won the toss” didn’t go down very well.
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It was the Crown before it became the Golden Eagle. As I recall it had quite a makeover at the time; the Crown was an unmitigated shithole and the Golden Eagle was definitely looking to head upmarket.
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You heartless, fucking cunt.
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All four of their pubs had the same menus, except for the Hunters. They also did a fantastic platter for 2, all the trimmings plus a shoulder of lamb or knuckle of gammon. And they were all definitely aimed rather more upmarket than Eastleigh would bear, unsurprisingly that was the first of them to close.
Not long after I’d moved to Eastleigh I went to the Golden Hind one evening - with my boss at the time and probably @Rust-Cohle???
Bearing in mind that I’m a big bloke and back then I talked with a Gosport (what’s your fucking problem?) lilt, and this, coupled with my lovable Oirish rogue act, meant I never really got into too much trouble. Even if I was being a twat people tended to give me a wide berth.
This one night I think I’d been drinking spirits so was definitely shitfaced and needed to visit the gents. I was standing at the urinal swaying gently when this pissed, short bloke came in, stood next to me and, even though I wasn’t talking said “shut-up, you fat cunt”.
I can’t remember what happened next but we argued - dicks in hand. My interminably slow bladder probably saved me doing something stupid. I think I realised that the only thing he said I could take issue with was the fact I wasn’t talking. Luckily It didn’t end in violence - although a light probably got smashed later.
I filed away The Golden Hind in the “avoid” category of pubs - along with the others I’d been sick in or smashed lights in. I never went back and rejoiced a little when they turned it into flats.
Re smashing lights, back then, and this will surprise you, I couldn’t really handle my drink. My party piece was getting annoyingly drunk and then punching any light that got in my way until it broke. Big ones, small ones, attached to houses, pubs, buildings, traffic islands, cars, whatever.
It was the sort of behaviour that a psychologist would pay good money to study.
Poor @Rust-Cohle usually had to shepherd me around after closing time so that my route home was not illuminated.
I’m amazed I turned out normal.
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They had some good bands on though. Remember seeing The Vapors just as they were getting played on radio. In fact in a 45 minute set, they played Turning Japanese twice.
That same year, I played for their Sunday pm football team, usually after a lunchtime sesh. They were probably the worst team I ever played in and included Goat’s pool oppo, James Westmacott.
Now for some reason what came to mind after reading that was the end of the ‘Fawlty Towers’ episode with the psychiatrists where one turns to the other and says “There’s enough material there for an entire conference“…
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