In 1954 , local amateur dramatics and concert party, the ‘ Footlight Follies’ put on its annual show in the Palace Cinema in East Street. A 42 year-old bachelor and Blandford Electricity Board clerk won £50,500 on the football pools. In 1955 , minesweeper HMS Durweston was launched in Hamworthy. It had a remarkably short service life and was sold to the Indian Navy in 1956. Blandford celebrated its 350 th anniversary by a week of entertainments and the visit of a Government minister. The Dorset Regiment was granted the Freedom of the Borough and marched through the streets with bayonets fixed. A tree was planted by the Mayor to commemorate the event. A Secondary Modern School was built in Lord Portman’s former deer park. In 1956 , Stourpaine & Durweston and Charlton Marshall railway halts closed as economy measures. However, the latter was still used until 1961 for special trains carrying Clayesmore School pupils. In 1957 , located on the north side of East Street,
Gordon Arnold Lonsdale was an apparently successful London based, Canadian businessman who had made his money by hiring out and selling jukeboxes, bubble gum and gambling machines. Another of his products, an electronic car locking device was awarded a gold award at an International Inventors’ Exhibition in Brussels. He was a stocky built man of medium height with a broad cheerful face and ‘very intelligent eyes. ’ On the 28 th June 1960, he had booked himself into the Crown Hotel in Blandford Forum. Yet, all was not what it seemed as Gordon Lonsdale was not his real name neither was he Canadian. His real name was Konon Trofimovich Molody and he was a 38 year old, Moscow born, Russian intelligence agent and master spy. He spoke excellent English with an American accent as he had lived for several years in the USA. Molody had stolen the identity of a dead man who had died in 1943. Purpose of his Blandford stay was later to meet two associates at a house in Meadow View Road, Weymouth