“ENGLAND IS SPOILED”

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 45, 17 November 1936, Page 8

“ENGLAND IS SPOILED”

New Zealand Visitor Finds Romance Gone SPREAD OF BUILDING Dominion Special Service. Auckland, November 16. “Very glad to be home again,” was how the veteran Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, Mr. A. T. Bothamley, summed up his emotions on his arrival by the Awatea after a visit to England. Mr. Bothamley, who is 90 years old. occupies a unique place in New Zealand Parliamentary history, having been connected with the Legislature for 65 years, and he has held the position of Black Rod for 44 years. His present visit to England, which was his first since 1914, was made in company with his daughter, Miss P. Bothamley. “England is spoiled,” Mr. Bothamley said. “London has spread out and the little villages that surrounded It, even 15 miles out, have been swallowed up in rows of houses. It was the same everywhere. We went to Land’s End and found a big hotel had been built there. All the romance is gone.” Mr. Bothamley visited the Temple Grove School, which he attended in 1854, and of which he is the oldest living old boy, but he confessed that he had not been near the Houses of Parliament. He paid a visit to the New South Wales Legislature, however, on his way home, and met the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, Sir Daniel Levy, whose acquaintance he had previously made in Wellington.