Red Lion Rally

Thank you to Lesley Weston for this info on the Red Lion Rally run by the Hailsham MCC sent in by Dave Cooper.

The rally was renamed the Martello Rally.

- Lesley

The first ever Red Lion Rally was held over the weekend of March 4/6th 1983.

The venue was The Red Lion, Magham Down. (Near Hailsham) There was a large wooden hall at the side of the pub making it an ideal site for a rally.

The Hailsham used to do a sterling job running bar & producing hot food.

The rally stayed at the same site until early this century when the pub closed very suddenly. It is now offices for a children's hospice.

The club only had one months notice before the rally of it's closing. So the last Red Lion Rally was held at an ex-servicemen's club in central Eastbourne.

The rally was then renamed the Martello Rally which ran until the Hailsham MCC folded in 2007.

- Lesley Weston
as reported by Dave Cooper

Start of quotation I remember that at least one of the Red Lion rallies there was Lesley at one end of the hall shouting out the numbers for breakfast whilst Phil (Dosser, her husband) was at the other end trying to do the raffle, so we had "number 45" and "number 325" at different ends of the hall. You had to have been there! End of quotation

- Graham Butler