Visitor To Thank Ashburton

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31985, 12 May 1969, Page 1

Visitor To Thank Ashburton

Today the women of Ashbarton and the borough will receive greetings from an English village and thanks for its adoption during the Second World War.

Mr J. H. Davis, aged 72, of Aylburton. England, on the Severn Estuary, 20 miles' from Gloucester, has been : visiting his daughter in 'he! North Island and is now stay-1 ing at Pines Beach. During World War 1, Mr Davis was in the Navy and in World War II he vas a warden and also chairman of the parish council when the Ashburton Country Women’s Institute adopted the institute in the village, sending food parcels and hand-made bedspreads. The council handed

the task of distribution of the parcels to the local institute.

“The parcels did a lot of good and the village was very grateful," said Mr Davis. This afternoon, he will meet some of the Ashburton

borough councillors and institute members of the period to extend Aylburton’s appreciation for Ashburton's assistance.

In Mr Davis’s, boyhood the population of Aylburton was 700, but it has grown to 2000.

It is die oldest hamlet in the district and the very old Anglican church was shifted stone by stone in 1836 from the top of a hill into the village. Iron-ore mining and dairy farming were once the main occupations but the mine building was closed, later becoming a brewery, and about 1909 Mr Davis managed it as a skating rink for the owner. During the Second World War |it was a depot where thousands of gas masks were made by the villagers' voluntary labour. Mr Davis is a retired tin plate worker who spent 29 years at a tin works and 22 years at an electric power station.

He is now a keen fisherman and has “done some wonderful trout fishing here.” A week ago he caught a 141 b snapper at Opotiki, and on the opening day of duck-shooting he shot two ducks, two pheasants. and one' quail. He compared the accessibility of fishing here with the difficulty at home where the fishing rights of many river stretches are sold for large sums and most fishermen join angling dubs which also bold rights over certain areas. Mr Davis began ski-ing when he was 66 during a previous visit to New Zealand

and he hopes -to go to Ruapehu again this winter as he 1 will not return to England until next year. The squire ' of Aylburton was the late Lord Bledisloe, a former Governor-General of : New Zealand, who owned a i large part of the area, includ- i ing farms. “He was held in high re- | spect and did a lot for the I village,” said Mr Davis. When Lord Bledisloe returned from New Zealand, he had been so impressed that he set aside a sum as trust fund for villagers wishing to emigrate to the Dominion. Applicants were to; be former servicemen or women or their children and each received a grant of £l5O j on the condition that they re- ■ mained at least two years in New Zealand. When the money. accumulated, the scheme was extended to include the next town, Lydney. Mr Davis’s daughter was | one of the first to emigrate under the scheme and at present he is staying with. Mr and Mrs M. Thompson who emigrated in the same way five years ago. They lived in Lydney, where their eldest children, now aged seven and eight, were born. Mr Davis was chairman of the Aylburton and Lydney Cricket Club for about 18 years and played

in the same team as Mr Thompson and his father. Mr Davis has brought with him slides showing the village and its life. These include his birthplace which “they

will think looks like a barn” and his cider-making machine. “Everyone makes cider if they have an orchard. We keep some and sell,the rest.” He said yesterday that he hoped a projector would be available for his use in Ashburton.