FIFTY YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 24 - 30 MARCH 1975
This week's many stories include the Barclays Bank robbery, a vow to stop building huge council estates in St Helens, why government ministers were investigating a redundancy crisis at Pilks, the Sherdley Park Golf Shop and the gift of an electric wheelchair that offered more freedom for a little Whiston girl.
We begin on the 25th when the St Helens Newspaper described how St Helens councillors had ordered Pilkingtons to shut down what was known as FR9, the firm's old Fibreglass plant, despite eighty jobs potentially being lost. The Environmental Health Committee had made the decision because FR9 was considered a source of great pollution and the committee's patience with Pilks had worn thin.
The Liverpool Echo reported on the 25th that Tina Lyon from Arnside Avenue in Rainhill was to fly to America with her mother for special medical treatment at the Institute for the Achievement of Human Potential in Philadelphia. An appeal fund to help Tina had so far raised £2,400 since it was launched last October.
Fourteen-year-old Tina had suffered brain damage as a baby following an attack of viral pneumonia and was now a pupil at a special school in Huyton. Tina's 22-year-old sister Catherine had launched the fund with Sylvia Betteley of Croxteth Drive in Rainford and Sue Hale of Rainhill Road.
In October 1969 the St Helens Reporter had written: "St. Helens is to move into the 70s with a 1990's-style housing development. More than 700 dwellings in a scheme costing £2,600,000 are to be built on a 49-acre site bounded by New Street and Gerard's Lane, Sutton." The paper added that the scheme would be similar to one that was being developed in Runcorn where the accent was placed on community living.
The houses in what would become Beth Avenue would be in groups of sixteen with many having their own gardens. It was also planned to incorporate small open spaces where children could play and still be watched over by their parents. However, as the unusually shaped homes were being built the newspaper dubbed the new development "Downtown Morocco" and joked about belly dancing, fezzes and snake charmers! Others called the estate "Legoland". And two weeks ago the Reporter had called Beth Avenue a "red brick and concrete jungle".
When the council's Housing and Building Committee met this week they vowed that no more massive estates such as those in Beth Avenue and Four Acre would ever be built in St Helens again. They said that in future any new developments would be well under the 200-house mark. The new council estates at Four Acre and Beth Avenue had been bedevilled by violence, vandalism and loneliness and Councillor Hughie Littler was particularly critical of the latter's design, telling the meeting:
"We have come to a ridiculous situation when we're building estates the size of Beth Avenue. One hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty is the optimum size for new development. We want no more Casbahs – because that's what I call that estate. All we're short of there are stables for the camels."
On the 27th a Haydock man appeared in St Helens Magistrates Court charged with robbing Barclays Bank. The 31-year-old had walked into the Church Street bank and pointed what appeared to be a small gun at cashier Catherine Rimmer saying, "Hand it over. I'm not joking. I'll shoot. Hand it over."
The frightened young woman handed the robber a bag containing £500 in £5 notes. The man then ran from the bank but two minutes later Detective Constables Alan Abbott and Peter Howarth stopped him in Shaw Street. The man pushed DC Howarth and said, "This is not my bloody day. If I was not so fat I could have run faster. It's only a toy. If that was a real shooter I'd have had you both as you got out of the car. If I could have got a real shooter and fired it into the ceiling I could have got £10,000."
The toy gun had been bought from Woolworths two hours before the robbery and St Helens magistrates remanded the man in custody to await trial at Liverpool Crown Court. On April 29th despite a defence of mental illness, as the man had previously been a patient at Winwick Hospital, the robber was sentenced to three years in prison.
The lead story in the Reporter on the 27th concerned government ministers Tony Benn and Peter Shore having promised to investigate the "redundancy crisis" that was affecting Pilkingtons. The St Helens glass giant had recently announced 1,300 job losses nationwide and they were expected to make more redundancies soon. But criticism of the firm was muted. It was the underlying factors that had caused Pilks to announce the losses that were being studied.
These included British car manufacturers using foreign glass at the expense of Pilkington's Triplex works. The ministers would also investigate why the main customer of Ravenhead Pressed Glass had been "forced" by Japanese exporters to change their product and drop Ravenhead as their supplier. Where there was criticism of Pilkingtons it concerned worries that their overseas activities in setting up subsidiaries and licensing its float glass process could be damaging to its UK employment prospects.
The Reporter also described how new technology was opening up new horizons for Jane Byrne. The 8-year-old from Gilbert Road in Whiston was paralysed from the waist down and a contractors and engineers' association had given the little girl an electric wheelchair. Its cost had been partly raised from a flower show that had taken place at Haydock racecourse.
Since local government reorganisation last year, a big talking point had been the so-called "death list" of housing stock. Nat Birch, the St Helens Director of Environmental Health, had controversially claimed that houses that had been improved by previous councils – in places such as Rainhill, Newton, Rainford and Eccleston – were potentially unfit and should be included in future demolition programmes. The Reporter said that April 14th had now been set as the date when a vital meeting to discuss the issue would take place and housing policy for these places decided.
The municipal 9-hole golf course at Sherdley Park had opened at Easter 1973 with Peter Parkinson from Southport its first professional golfer. The course was currently being extended to 18 holes on what had previously been farmland. I don't think I have previously seen an advert from the golf course in the Reporter before but one was published this week. More accurately it came from the Sherdley Park Golf Shop, which I expect was run privately by Peter Parkinson. The ad said:
"Golfers “swing” into spring at Sherdley Park Golf Shop. For your new or second hand equipment to suit every price range. Plus a fantastic range of shoes, golf bags, etc. In fact all accessories. Hiring facilities available. Trade-ins welcomed. Open 8 a.m. – Dusk every day including weekends. Personal attention assured by Peter Parkinson. P.G.A. qualified golf professional. Tel. Marshalls Cross 813149."
What was described as The New Hillsiders played the Theatre Royal on the 27th. On the same day Silcocks "Easter Pleasure Fair" began at Carr Mill and would continue until April 7th, featuring "waltzer, dodgems, speedway, kiddies corner".
It was Good Friday on the 28th and youngsters from the Children's Church at St Nicholas in Sutton (pictured above) acted out parts of the Bible story inside the parish hall. George Myers was responsible for the project and he narrated the four scenes that 45 children in modern dress aged between 7 and 12 acted out.
And finally, it was a case of musical chairs at the town's two cinemas from the 30th. At the ABC Savoy, 'The Man With The Golden Gun' starring Roger Moore as James Bond replaced Disney's 'The Island At The Top Of The World'.
And the Capitol Cinema replaced 'Escape From The Planet Of The Apes' with 'The Island At The Top Of The World'. I wonder if someone just walked from Bridge Street to North Road with the reels of the Disney film under their arm and said "It's your turn now to show it for a week"!
St Helens Reporter and Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include why the Common Market was stopping St Helens from installing new road signs, hopes rise over an agreement to resolve the Rainhill Hospital dispute and the explosion on a building site caused by the lighting of a cigar.
We begin on the 25th when the St Helens Newspaper described how St Helens councillors had ordered Pilkingtons to shut down what was known as FR9, the firm's old Fibreglass plant, despite eighty jobs potentially being lost. The Environmental Health Committee had made the decision because FR9 was considered a source of great pollution and the committee's patience with Pilks had worn thin.
The Liverpool Echo reported on the 25th that Tina Lyon from Arnside Avenue in Rainhill was to fly to America with her mother for special medical treatment at the Institute for the Achievement of Human Potential in Philadelphia. An appeal fund to help Tina had so far raised £2,400 since it was launched last October.
Fourteen-year-old Tina had suffered brain damage as a baby following an attack of viral pneumonia and was now a pupil at a special school in Huyton. Tina's 22-year-old sister Catherine had launched the fund with Sylvia Betteley of Croxteth Drive in Rainford and Sue Hale of Rainhill Road.
In October 1969 the St Helens Reporter had written: "St. Helens is to move into the 70s with a 1990's-style housing development. More than 700 dwellings in a scheme costing £2,600,000 are to be built on a 49-acre site bounded by New Street and Gerard's Lane, Sutton." The paper added that the scheme would be similar to one that was being developed in Runcorn where the accent was placed on community living.
When the council's Housing and Building Committee met this week they vowed that no more massive estates such as those in Beth Avenue and Four Acre would ever be built in St Helens again. They said that in future any new developments would be well under the 200-house mark. The new council estates at Four Acre and Beth Avenue had been bedevilled by violence, vandalism and loneliness and Councillor Hughie Littler was particularly critical of the latter's design, telling the meeting:
"We have come to a ridiculous situation when we're building estates the size of Beth Avenue. One hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty is the optimum size for new development. We want no more Casbahs – because that's what I call that estate. All we're short of there are stables for the camels."
On the 27th a Haydock man appeared in St Helens Magistrates Court charged with robbing Barclays Bank. The 31-year-old had walked into the Church Street bank and pointed what appeared to be a small gun at cashier Catherine Rimmer saying, "Hand it over. I'm not joking. I'll shoot. Hand it over."
The frightened young woman handed the robber a bag containing £500 in £5 notes. The man then ran from the bank but two minutes later Detective Constables Alan Abbott and Peter Howarth stopped him in Shaw Street. The man pushed DC Howarth and said, "This is not my bloody day. If I was not so fat I could have run faster. It's only a toy. If that was a real shooter I'd have had you both as you got out of the car. If I could have got a real shooter and fired it into the ceiling I could have got £10,000."
The toy gun had been bought from Woolworths two hours before the robbery and St Helens magistrates remanded the man in custody to await trial at Liverpool Crown Court. On April 29th despite a defence of mental illness, as the man had previously been a patient at Winwick Hospital, the robber was sentenced to three years in prison.
The lead story in the Reporter on the 27th concerned government ministers Tony Benn and Peter Shore having promised to investigate the "redundancy crisis" that was affecting Pilkingtons. The St Helens glass giant had recently announced 1,300 job losses nationwide and they were expected to make more redundancies soon. But criticism of the firm was muted. It was the underlying factors that had caused Pilks to announce the losses that were being studied.
These included British car manufacturers using foreign glass at the expense of Pilkington's Triplex works. The ministers would also investigate why the main customer of Ravenhead Pressed Glass had been "forced" by Japanese exporters to change their product and drop Ravenhead as their supplier. Where there was criticism of Pilkingtons it concerned worries that their overseas activities in setting up subsidiaries and licensing its float glass process could be damaging to its UK employment prospects.
The Reporter also described how new technology was opening up new horizons for Jane Byrne. The 8-year-old from Gilbert Road in Whiston was paralysed from the waist down and a contractors and engineers' association had given the little girl an electric wheelchair. Its cost had been partly raised from a flower show that had taken place at Haydock racecourse.
Since local government reorganisation last year, a big talking point had been the so-called "death list" of housing stock. Nat Birch, the St Helens Director of Environmental Health, had controversially claimed that houses that had been improved by previous councils – in places such as Rainhill, Newton, Rainford and Eccleston – were potentially unfit and should be included in future demolition programmes. The Reporter said that April 14th had now been set as the date when a vital meeting to discuss the issue would take place and housing policy for these places decided.
The municipal 9-hole golf course at Sherdley Park had opened at Easter 1973 with Peter Parkinson from Southport its first professional golfer. The course was currently being extended to 18 holes on what had previously been farmland. I don't think I have previously seen an advert from the golf course in the Reporter before but one was published this week. More accurately it came from the Sherdley Park Golf Shop, which I expect was run privately by Peter Parkinson. The ad said:
"Golfers “swing” into spring at Sherdley Park Golf Shop. For your new or second hand equipment to suit every price range. Plus a fantastic range of shoes, golf bags, etc. In fact all accessories. Hiring facilities available. Trade-ins welcomed. Open 8 a.m. – Dusk every day including weekends. Personal attention assured by Peter Parkinson. P.G.A. qualified golf professional. Tel. Marshalls Cross 813149."
What was described as The New Hillsiders played the Theatre Royal on the 27th. On the same day Silcocks "Easter Pleasure Fair" began at Carr Mill and would continue until April 7th, featuring "waltzer, dodgems, speedway, kiddies corner".
And finally, it was a case of musical chairs at the town's two cinemas from the 30th. At the ABC Savoy, 'The Man With The Golden Gun' starring Roger Moore as James Bond replaced Disney's 'The Island At The Top Of The World'.
And the Capitol Cinema replaced 'Escape From The Planet Of The Apes' with 'The Island At The Top Of The World'. I wonder if someone just walked from Bridge Street to North Road with the reels of the Disney film under their arm and said "It's your turn now to show it for a week"!
St Helens Reporter and Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include why the Common Market was stopping St Helens from installing new road signs, hopes rise over an agreement to resolve the Rainhill Hospital dispute and the explosion on a building site caused by the lighting of a cigar.
This week's many stories include the Barclays Bank robbery, a vow to stop building huge council estates in St Helens, why government ministers were investigating a redundancy crisis at Pilks, the Sherdley Park Golf Shop and the gift of an electric wheelchair that offered more freedom for a little Whiston girl.
We begin on the 25th when the St Helens Newspaper described how St Helens councillors had ordered Pilkingtons to shut down what was known as FR9, the firm's old Fibreglass plant, despite eighty jobs potentially being lost.
The Environmental Health Committee had made the decision because FR9 was considered a source of great pollution and the committee's patience with Pilks had worn thin.
The Liverpool Echo reported on the 25th that Tina Lyon from Arnside Avenue in Rainhill was to fly to America with her mother for special medical treatment at the Institute for the Achievement of Human Potential in Philadelphia.
An appeal fund to help Tina had so far raised £2,400 since it was launched last October.
Fourteen-year-old Tina had suffered brain damage as a baby following an attack of viral pneumonia and was now a pupil at a special school in Huyton.
Tina's 22-year-old sister Catherine had launched the fund with Sylvia Betteley of Croxteth Drive in Rainford and Sue Hale of Rainhill Road.
In October 1969 the St Helens Reporter had written: "St. Helens is to move into the 70s with a 1990's-style housing development. More than 700 dwellings in a scheme costing £2,600,000 are to be built on a 49-acre site bounded by New Street and Gerard's Lane, Sutton."
The paper added that the scheme would be similar to one that was being developed in Runcorn where the accent was placed on community living.
The houses in what would become Beth Avenue would be in groups of sixteen with many having their own gardens. It was also planned to incorporate small open spaces where children could play and still be watched over by their parents.
However, as the unusually shaped homes were being built the newspaper dubbed the new development "Downtown Morocco" and joked about belly dancing, fezzes and snake charmers! Others called the estate "Legoland".
And two weeks ago the Reporter had called Beth Avenue a "red brick and concrete jungle".
When the council's Housing and Building Committee met this week they vowed that no more massive estates such as those in Beth Avenue and Four Acre would ever be built in St Helens again.
They said that in future any new developments would be well under the 200-house mark.
The new council estates at Four Acre and Beth Avenue had been bedevilled by violence, vandalism and loneliness and Councillor Hughie Littler was particularly critical of the latter's design, telling the meeting:
"We have come to a ridiculous situation when we're building estates the size of Beth Avenue.
"One hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty is the optimum size for new development. We want no more Casbahs – because that's what I call that estate. All we're short of there are stables for the camels."
On the 27th a Haydock man appeared in St Helens Magistrates Court charged with robbing Barclays Bank.
The 31-year-old had walked into the Church Street bank and pointed what appeared to be a small gun at cashier Catherine Rimmer saying, "Hand it over. I'm not joking. I'll shoot. Hand it over."
The frightened young woman handed the robber a bag containing £500 in £5 notes.
The man then ran from the bank but two minutes later Detective Constables Alan Abbott and Peter Howarth stopped him in Shaw Street.
The man pushed DC Howarth and said, "This is not my bloody day. If I was not so fat I could have run faster. It's only a toy. If that was a real shooter I'd have had you both as you got out of the car. If I could have got a real shooter and fired it into the ceiling I could have got £10,000."
The toy gun had been bought from Woolworths two hours before the robbery and St Helens magistrates remanded the man in custody to await trial at Liverpool Crown Court.
On April 29th despite a defence of mental illness, as the man had previously been a patient at Winwick Hospital, the robber was sentenced to three years in prison.
The lead story in the Reporter on the 27th concerned government ministers Tony Benn and Peter Shore having promised to investigate the "redundancy crisis" that was affecting Pilkingtons.
The St Helens glass giant had recently announced 1,300 job losses nationwide and they were expected to make more redundancies soon.
But criticism of the firm was muted. It was the underlying factors that had caused Pilks to announce the losses that were being studied.
These included British car manufacturers using foreign glass at the expense of Pilkington's Triplex works.
The ministers would also investigate why the main customer of Ravenhead Pressed Glass had been "forced" by Japanese exporters to change their product and drop Ravenhead as their supplier.
Where there was criticism of Pilkingtons it concerned worries that their overseas activities in setting up subsidiaries and licensing its float glass process could be damaging to its UK employment prospects.
The Reporter also described how new technology was opening up new horizons for Jane Byrne.
The 8-year-old from Gilbert Road in Whiston was paralysed from the waist down and a contractors and engineers' association had given the little girl an electric wheelchair.
Its cost had been partly raised from a flower show that had taken place at Haydock racecourse.
Since local government reorganisation last year, a big talking point had been the so-called "death list" of housing stock.
Nat Birch, the St Helens Director of Environmental Health, had controversially claimed that houses that had been improved by previous councils – in places such as Rainhill, Newton, Rainford and Eccleston – were potentially unfit and should be included in future demolition programmes.
The Reporter said that April 14th had now been set as the date when a vital meeting to discuss the issue would take place and housing policy for these places decided.
The municipal 9-hole golf course at Sherdley Park had opened at Easter 1973 with Peter Parkinson from Southport its first professional golfer.
The course was currently being extended to 18 holes on what had previously been farmland.
I don't think I have previously seen an advert from the golf course in the Reporter before but one was published this week.
More accurately it came from the Sherdley Park Golf Shop, which I expect was run privately by Peter Parkinson. The ad said:
"Golfers “swing” into spring at Sherdley Park Golf Shop. For your new or second hand equipment to suit every price range. Plus a fantastic range of shoes, golf bags, etc. In fact all accessories. Hiring facilities available. Trade-ins welcomed.
"Open 8 a.m. – Dusk every day including weekends. Personal attention assured by Peter Parkinson. P.G.A. qualified golf professional. Tel. Marshalls Cross 813149."
What was described as The New Hillsiders played the Theatre Royal on the 27th.
On the same day Silcocks "Easter Pleasure Fair" began at Carr Mill and would continue until April 7th, featuring "waltzer, dodgems, speedway, kiddies corner".
It was Good Friday on the 28th and youngsters from the Children's Church at St Nicholas in Sutton (pictured above) acted out parts of the Bible story inside the parish hall.
George Myers was responsible for the project and he narrated the four scenes that 45 children in modern dress aged between 7 and 12 acted out.
And finally, it was a case of musical chairs at the town's two cinemas from the 30th.
At the ABC Savoy, 'The Man With The Golden Gun' starring Roger Moore as James Bond replaced Disney's 'The Island At The Top Of The World'.
And the Capitol Cinema replaced 'Escape From The Planet Of The Apes' with 'The Island At The Top Of The World'.
I wonder if someone just walked from Bridge Street to North Road with the reels of the Disney film under their arm and said "It's your turn now to show it for a week"!
St Helens Reporter and Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include why the Common Market was stopping St Helens from installing new road signs, hopes rise over an agreement to resolve the Rainhill Hospital dispute and the explosion on a building site caused by the lighting of a cigar.
We begin on the 25th when the St Helens Newspaper described how St Helens councillors had ordered Pilkingtons to shut down what was known as FR9, the firm's old Fibreglass plant, despite eighty jobs potentially being lost.
The Environmental Health Committee had made the decision because FR9 was considered a source of great pollution and the committee's patience with Pilks had worn thin.
The Liverpool Echo reported on the 25th that Tina Lyon from Arnside Avenue in Rainhill was to fly to America with her mother for special medical treatment at the Institute for the Achievement of Human Potential in Philadelphia.
An appeal fund to help Tina had so far raised £2,400 since it was launched last October.
Fourteen-year-old Tina had suffered brain damage as a baby following an attack of viral pneumonia and was now a pupil at a special school in Huyton.
Tina's 22-year-old sister Catherine had launched the fund with Sylvia Betteley of Croxteth Drive in Rainford and Sue Hale of Rainhill Road.
In October 1969 the St Helens Reporter had written: "St. Helens is to move into the 70s with a 1990's-style housing development. More than 700 dwellings in a scheme costing £2,600,000 are to be built on a 49-acre site bounded by New Street and Gerard's Lane, Sutton."
The paper added that the scheme would be similar to one that was being developed in Runcorn where the accent was placed on community living.
The houses in what would become Beth Avenue would be in groups of sixteen with many having their own gardens. It was also planned to incorporate small open spaces where children could play and still be watched over by their parents.
And two weeks ago the Reporter had called Beth Avenue a "red brick and concrete jungle".
When the council's Housing and Building Committee met this week they vowed that no more massive estates such as those in Beth Avenue and Four Acre would ever be built in St Helens again.
They said that in future any new developments would be well under the 200-house mark.
The new council estates at Four Acre and Beth Avenue had been bedevilled by violence, vandalism and loneliness and Councillor Hughie Littler was particularly critical of the latter's design, telling the meeting:
"We have come to a ridiculous situation when we're building estates the size of Beth Avenue.
"One hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty is the optimum size for new development. We want no more Casbahs – because that's what I call that estate. All we're short of there are stables for the camels."
On the 27th a Haydock man appeared in St Helens Magistrates Court charged with robbing Barclays Bank.
The 31-year-old had walked into the Church Street bank and pointed what appeared to be a small gun at cashier Catherine Rimmer saying, "Hand it over. I'm not joking. I'll shoot. Hand it over."
The frightened young woman handed the robber a bag containing £500 in £5 notes.
The man then ran from the bank but two minutes later Detective Constables Alan Abbott and Peter Howarth stopped him in Shaw Street.
The man pushed DC Howarth and said, "This is not my bloody day. If I was not so fat I could have run faster. It's only a toy. If that was a real shooter I'd have had you both as you got out of the car. If I could have got a real shooter and fired it into the ceiling I could have got £10,000."
The toy gun had been bought from Woolworths two hours before the robbery and St Helens magistrates remanded the man in custody to await trial at Liverpool Crown Court.
On April 29th despite a defence of mental illness, as the man had previously been a patient at Winwick Hospital, the robber was sentenced to three years in prison.
The lead story in the Reporter on the 27th concerned government ministers Tony Benn and Peter Shore having promised to investigate the "redundancy crisis" that was affecting Pilkingtons.
The St Helens glass giant had recently announced 1,300 job losses nationwide and they were expected to make more redundancies soon.
But criticism of the firm was muted. It was the underlying factors that had caused Pilks to announce the losses that were being studied.
These included British car manufacturers using foreign glass at the expense of Pilkington's Triplex works.
The ministers would also investigate why the main customer of Ravenhead Pressed Glass had been "forced" by Japanese exporters to change their product and drop Ravenhead as their supplier.
Where there was criticism of Pilkingtons it concerned worries that their overseas activities in setting up subsidiaries and licensing its float glass process could be damaging to its UK employment prospects.
The Reporter also described how new technology was opening up new horizons for Jane Byrne.
The 8-year-old from Gilbert Road in Whiston was paralysed from the waist down and a contractors and engineers' association had given the little girl an electric wheelchair.
Its cost had been partly raised from a flower show that had taken place at Haydock racecourse.
Since local government reorganisation last year, a big talking point had been the so-called "death list" of housing stock.
Nat Birch, the St Helens Director of Environmental Health, had controversially claimed that houses that had been improved by previous councils – in places such as Rainhill, Newton, Rainford and Eccleston – were potentially unfit and should be included in future demolition programmes.
The Reporter said that April 14th had now been set as the date when a vital meeting to discuss the issue would take place and housing policy for these places decided.
The municipal 9-hole golf course at Sherdley Park had opened at Easter 1973 with Peter Parkinson from Southport its first professional golfer.
The course was currently being extended to 18 holes on what had previously been farmland.
I don't think I have previously seen an advert from the golf course in the Reporter before but one was published this week.
More accurately it came from the Sherdley Park Golf Shop, which I expect was run privately by Peter Parkinson. The ad said:
"Golfers “swing” into spring at Sherdley Park Golf Shop. For your new or second hand equipment to suit every price range. Plus a fantastic range of shoes, golf bags, etc. In fact all accessories. Hiring facilities available. Trade-ins welcomed.
"Open 8 a.m. – Dusk every day including weekends. Personal attention assured by Peter Parkinson. P.G.A. qualified golf professional. Tel. Marshalls Cross 813149."
What was described as The New Hillsiders played the Theatre Royal on the 27th.
On the same day Silcocks "Easter Pleasure Fair" began at Carr Mill and would continue until April 7th, featuring "waltzer, dodgems, speedway, kiddies corner".
George Myers was responsible for the project and he narrated the four scenes that 45 children in modern dress aged between 7 and 12 acted out.
And finally, it was a case of musical chairs at the town's two cinemas from the 30th.
At the ABC Savoy, 'The Man With The Golden Gun' starring Roger Moore as James Bond replaced Disney's 'The Island At The Top Of The World'.
And the Capitol Cinema replaced 'Escape From The Planet Of The Apes' with 'The Island At The Top Of The World'.
I wonder if someone just walked from Bridge Street to North Road with the reels of the Disney film under their arm and said "It's your turn now to show it for a week"!
St Helens Reporter and Newspaper courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include why the Common Market was stopping St Helens from installing new road signs, hopes rise over an agreement to resolve the Rainhill Hospital dispute and the explosion on a building site caused by the lighting of a cigar.