AROUND the time of WWII, Harold Butler, Clem Butler (his brother), Billy Butler (Clem’s son), Bertie Field (Clem’s sonin- law) and others would sometimes travel together to London by train to buy some horses at the Elephant and Castle or Southall horse sales.

Harold Butler would buy horses that were slightly lame, caused by constant use on hard roads and would turn them out on his soft swampy land in Shepherd’s Spring Lane where Sainsbury’s supermarket now stands. Given a good field and a good rest was an attempt to improve them. The horses would then be sold on.

To bring the animals to Andover, sometimes a railway horse box would be booked for delivery to Andover Junction or otherwise road transport would be used.

Their journey to the sales would be broken at a café opposite Waterloo Station where they would each buy a horsemeat dinner. In wartime selling horsemeat was legal as long as a sign was outside the premises declaring this. After his first visit to the café, Bertie Field was nearly sick when Billy Butler pointed to the sign outside and told him that he had just eaten horsemeat.

Bertie Field could not read or write.

Derek Weeks, Martin Way, Andover