We then moved on to recall pint-sized pub the Burdon Tap in Weymouth. It was a delight to hear from Mrs Heather Byfleet, who wrote to Looking Back as her paternal grandparents were licensees of the Burdon Tap from 1928 to 1941. She also shared with us another picture of this wonderful little pub, which was in Victoria Street opposite the rear of the Burdon Hotel (now the Prince Regent). Mrs Byfleet, a Weymouth resident of 90 years, tells us: My grandmother managed the Tap from 1937 to 1941 on her own, after my grandfather Harry E. Hawkins died. Grandmas was Mrs Eva Hawkins - from a Weymouth family.
With plans being unveiled (again!) for the redevelopment of the former Council Offices site in Weymouth, it is perhaps time to look at what was on the site in the 1950s before the mass demolition of buildings on North Quay and in High Street. Many properties in Chapelhay had been damaged beyond economic repair in the air raids of 1940/41, but some properties in High Street had suffered from bomb blast, although much was largely structurally intact. There was little or no damage to properties in North Quay. The Council had prepared a somewhat grandiose, optimistic scheme in 1948 to cover Chapelhay and High Street, which would include municipal offices and conference hall, police station, courts, museum and library, government offices, aquarium, shops, boathouses, flats and new houses.