A WOMAN who was devoted to Alresford has been remembered with a memorial bench.

Winchester MP Steve Brine unveiled the bench dedicated to Pam Stevens in The Avenue on June 27.

A sizeable socially-distanced crowd joined Pam’s family for the event.

Pam was a trustee of the New Alresford Town Trust and had a key role in the Alresford Minibus service.

Robin Atkins, a long-serving trustee and chairman of the trust, remembered Pam as a “hard-working and devoted” member of the team.

Pam served as a trustee for 12 years and built up the minibus service to run 600 trips per year covering 10,000 miles.

She was in charge of buying two new minibuses during her trusteeship – the trust has bought a total of eight minibuses since taking over the service in 1970 – organising more than 30 drivers, arranging passengers’ journeys and keeping the buses roadworthy and insured.

Pam built up the markets in Broad Street, recruiting stalls for the small but successful Thursday market and extending the specialist markets, which now comprise French, Italian and Brocante markets organised twice a year by Jackie Edwards.

She was clerk to the trust and chaired the hardship and Covid funds for residents needing financial assistance.

Pam’s efforts were instrumental in making the trust important to Alresford and the trustees agreed unanimously to celebrate her role by placing a bench with a plaque in The Avenue to remember her.

Alresford Rotary Club and the Alresford Pigs Association, which both worked closely with Pam, agreed to help pay for it, as did Peter Bridges and Paul Daubeney, who admired her community work.

Speaking at the ceremony, Pam’s son Mark Stevens summed up her love of Alresford by saying that when he visited her in hospital she was on her laptop doing trust work. He thought The Avenue was “a fitting place”, which his mother loved, for the bench.

Mr Brine, who knew Pam as a trustee and a friend, said: “Pam was, in so many ways, Mrs Alresford and she put so much into the town to help so many people.

“She was never bothered who got the credit. Alresford will certainly miss Pam Stevens and so will I.”