The year 2025 has been a busy one in Alton, with a huge variety of stories coming out of the East Hampshire market town and its surrounding villages.

Chawton and Alton were at the heart of celebrations of the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth.

In Chawton, the Jane Austen’s House museum and nearby Chawton House hosted a range of exhibitions and events building up to the author’s birthday on December 16.

Alton started the party 11 months early, with dancers in Regency costumes learning the moves of the time at a Jane Austen Birthday Ball in January.

The anniversary made the town’s annual Jane Austen Regency Week in June an even bigger event than usual, with the highlight being the unveiling of a sculpture of Jane outside the Assembly Rooms.

Celebrating 70 years was Broadlands Equine Therapy and Riding for the Disabled Association in Medstead, which raised an additional £31,500 on top of money to cover expenses in order to buy three new ponies. The Alton Victorian Cricket Tournament raised £9,000 of this for the charity.

Bad news came in threes in April and May, with a suspected stabbing during a vicious fight in Waitrose, the deaths of 91-year-old Stan Rickman and his 88-year-old wife Roma in a suspected arson attack at their home in Heron Close, and financial meltdown at HSDC, which includes Alton College.

HSDC principal Mike Gaston announced his retirement in June amid warnings of courses being cancelled and staff facing redundancy at its Alton, Havant and Purbrook campuses, but HSDC denied that his departure was as a result of the ongoing crisis.

Flags became a hot topic of debate in the latter part of the year, with hundreds of people sharing their thoughts on social media and in the letters page of the Herald about Union Flags springing up on lampposts all around the town.

Opinion was divided as to whether they were an expression of pride in the nation or a way of intimidating certain sections of the community amid nationwide controversy over asylum seekers.

Local victims of national cover-ups were in the news again. Former South Warnborough postmistress Jo Hamilton, brought to the attention of television viewers last year in Mr Bates vs The Post Office, published a book, Why Are You Here, Mrs Hamilton?, about her experiences in the Post Office scandal.

Also getting their injustice highlighted on national television were the Treloar’s victims of the infected blood scandal, some of whom spoke candidly in the documentary The British Blood Scandal: Poisoned at School.

Government housing target increases added to pressure to build on countryside around Alton, with various local residents groups coalescing into the A31 Alliance to fight multiple speculative housing planning applications in the area, and 22,536 people signing the Save Jane Austen Country petition.

And another story stretching back more than two centuries rounded off 2025, with proposals to consider separating Kings Pond from the River Wey surviving by one vote at an Alton Town Council meeting on December 10.