A 64-year-old tree carving has been saved from the road builders' chainsaws when the new A3 tunnel is built under the Devil's Punchbowl in the next few years. A carving in a 400-year-old beech tree, which stands two feet high and depicts a caricature of a Second World War pin-up, was believed to have been whittled by London-born Gerald Wadham, who ran the Black Fox pub for many years in Liphook and died five years ago. Gerald bought the pub back in 1969 and had to close it down for a few months to complete a major refurbishment. When the pub re-opened, Mr Wadham added a restaurant, and it wasn't not long before his new business venture became the talk of the town. Mr Wadham's daughter, Christine Oliver, who still lives in Liphook, believes the inscription 'G Wadham', along with the word Southall and the date 5/ 3/ 43, points to her father as the impromptu wood sculptor. Mrs Oliver said: "It's interesting and I think there's a high probability that it was him. He would have been living in Southall in 1943. He always told me that he was very upset, because he had to leave school and go and work in his father's shop after his mother died when he was 15. "He would have been nearly 16 in March 1943, but I have no idea what he would have been doing at the Devil's Punchbowl. It has always been a popular place, so maybe it was just an excursion or they wanted to see the soldiers." Gerald's father and brother also had a first name beginning with G – George and George junior – but his brother, who lived in Hindhead at Beacon Hill, was in South Africa at the time of the carving. Conservationists in consultation with the Highways Agency have managed to get the boundary of the new road moved a few feet in order to save the tree, which will now mark the entrance to one of the tunnels. A spokesman for the Highways Agency said: "It's an interesting little piece of history, and we have managed to amend the boundary so that the tree can stay."
