Sandy Balls annual egg rolling down Good Friday Hill in 2004

Among the quirky place names strewn across the UK, Sandy Balls finds itself in good company with Slag Lane in Merseyside, Titty Ho in Northamptonshire, Crotch Crescent in Oxford, and Fanny Hands Lane in Lincolnshire. 

In light of this, we take a look back at a decades-old Sandy Balls tradition that still takes place to this day and that's almost as peculiar as the name.

When these pictures were snapped in 2004, scores of youngsters were keeping alive an Easter tradition that dates back to the 1880s. 

However, safety fears meant the annual egg rolling in the New Forest village of Godshill was less of a scramble than before.

As in previous years, young ones assembled amidst the trees of the Sandy Balls vacation spot to send off their beautifully adorned hard-boiled eggs from the summit of Good Friday Hill.

As opposed to eagerly dashing down the steep hill in pursuit of their rolling eggs, the youthful decorators found themselves pausing at the peak, witnessing their eggs smash their way down to the valley beneath them.

Nearly all the pine trees on the slope have now been chopped down as part of work to improve the centre’s woodlands and organisers thought it was too dangerous to let children scrabble down the hill.

Instead, the youngsters simply sent their eggs rolling from the top of the hill and then walked the long way round to find out if their creations had survived the fall.

Tradition has it that the eggrolling custom started back in the 1880s, when girls from Godshill used to challenge their rivals in the neighbouring town of Fordingbridge.

Apparently, Fordingbridge girls always managed to win because they sneakily hardboiled their eggs, while the Godshill ladies used fresh eggs.

The Good Friday egg-rolling was revived in the 1930s when the Westlake family bought the Sandy Balls estate.