HISTORY
New Forest Hospital Radio celebrated its quarter century just over a year ago, having first broadcast in 1979 to Lymington Infirmary and Linden House a nearby old people's care home, after five years of hard slog collecting records and raising money. It was decided that the station would be named Radio Link.
The following year broadcasts were extended to the main lymington Hospital, half a mile up the road, which was linked to the studio at the Infirmary by landline. So we were broadcasting to three locations.
Interestingly part of the Infirmary, like the Matron, was of Victorian origin, built as a workhouse. The hospital authorities had made available a single storey outbuilding, previously used as a paint store, which are founder members successfully converted to a studio. That outbuilding at one time had been the delousing shed for residents of the workhouse! Rumours that the first record played on Radio Link was the Small Face's Itchycoo Park are entirely unfounded!
This was then to remain our home until 2002 when the decision was taken to close the Infirmary. We continued broadcasting to the separate hospital and Lindon House, surrounded by an otherwise deserted and bricked up Infirmary building, until one night when the original Victorian slates were stripped from the studio roof after we had gone home!
The PCT (Primary Care Trust) had promised us a storeroom in the main hospital building, which they were kindly renovating for our use. Broadcasts restarted five months later when the studio was ready and our equipment and recordings had been moved from temporary storage in a disused ward. Tony Clark the presenter of the Linden House show, didn't see why the PCT's premises problems should deprive the old people of their weekly requests. So he took home the essential kit, set up a temporary studio in the fourth bedroom and recorded the show there every week for five months!
At the start of 2005 a new hospital began to be constructed on the old Ampress Engineering site on the outskirts of Lymington. This was to be a fresh challenge to the members of Lymington Hospital Radio. So under the chairmanship of Mike Robinson we decided to launch an 18 month fund raising appeal to equip ourselves with a state of the art radio station, but in order to do this we had to raise over £35,000 pounds.
The members of Hospital Radio link rose magnificently to the challenge. Tony Clark did a sponsored 24 hour solo broadcast during HBA week in April 2006, and the Hospital League of Friends, who are very committed to what we do, offered to subsidise us. We also received large donations and support from many local individuals and companies who gave us encouragement from beginning to end.
In December 2006 we opened our fantastic modern computer based recording studio which will be named in memory of one of our founder members Basil Trask, who sadly passed away in January 2007 after retiring 3 months earlier at the age of 87. It was also decided to relaunch out radio name, and we 
decided on New Forest Hospital Radio. So as you can see we've come along way from our humble beginnings in a workhouse delousing shed!