FIFTY YEARS AGO THIS WEEK 8 - 14 JUNE 1976
This week's many stories include the concerns over the pedestrianisation of Hardshaw Street, the canal rescue of a child at Blackbrook, a call for more women to hold senior positions in St Helens Town Hall, how gas lamps could be making a comeback and why Pilks' workers were upset with football boss Lawrie McMenemy.
We begin on the 8th at a meeting of the Area Health Authority where concerns were raised that outpatients could be deprived of medical treatment because they could not afford to travel to a clinic or hospital. The meeting heard that for most outpatient appointments, patients could not be taken in ambulances and the high cost of fares – with them having trebled in price over the last 18 months – was acting as a deterrent to going on the bus. However, it was decided that there was a need to find some alternative mode of transport to help patients, some of whom might be skipping their treatment because of the cost of travel.
The lead story in the St Helens Reporter on the 11th was that the Beth Avenue and Dominic Way Community Council had been disbanded. That was after its chairman and secretary had both resigned upon admitting having a 14-month-long affair.
Jenny Clarke of Chestnut Avenue in Haydock was praised in the paper for saving a child from drowning in the canal at Blackbrook. The drama occurred when the young mother was taking her own children for a walk. Jenny said:
"There were quite a few youngsters playing around there, and some who were running across the weir. I was shouting at them to get off when I saw a child bobbing up and down in the water. Not being able to swim, I tried to reach her from the side, but ended up falling in myself. Anyway, I managed to grab hold of the child – she was about four – and get her to safety." Two men who assisted in the rescue took the girl away but Jenny said she'd like to know if the child whose name she did not know was all right.
Councillor Dorothy Fogg told the Reporter that St Helens Town Hall needed more women in senior positions. "A good woman is often head and shoulders above any male", she remarked. Currently, there was only one female chief officer employed by St Helens Council. She was Hilda Nock who became the Deputy Director of Libraries, Museums and Arts in 1974.
Mrs Fogg continued: "A man is inclined to do his day's work and think he is God when he goes home. A woman has to carry on working when she gets home from her job. Women have to put up with more pressure." She said she planned to appeal to her colleagues on the council's Personnel Sub-Committee to give female job applicants every chance.
However, the Town Clerk, Brian Lace, told the Reporter that sex was not a barrier to a woman getting a job at the Town Hall: "The best people get the jobs. It doesn't matter whether they are male or female."
The paper also described how a mother had warned that the newly pedestrianised Hardshaw Street was still a traffic hazard. Anniece Beck from Pennine Drive in Parr said she was concerned that trucks and lorries delivering goods to shops were being allowed to use Hardshaw Street: "People will be lulled into a false sense of security when they walk along the paved street. They won't be on the look-out for traffic."
The Reporter said that it had only been weeks earlier that Hardshaw Street had been covered with hundreds of paving stones but town centre shoppers had already labelled the scheme a waste of public money and it was puzzling to motorists. That was because as well as heavy vehicles having access to shops, vehicles could still call on banks and building societies.
The Reporter described how glassworkers at Pilkington's Sheet Works in Grove Street were upset with Lawrie McMenemy. The football manager's team was Southampton who in May had beaten Manchester United in the 1976 FA Cup Final. But that was not the reason for the glassmen's displeasure. There were rumours that in the light of his Wembley victory, McMenemy was going to be offered a new £15,000 a year contract.
But the government had introduced restrictions on pay rises to curb high rates of inflation. And so the Pilks' workers were described as "hopping mad" that they were restricted to a £6 pay increase but a different rule seemingly applied in football. Union secretary Bill Bradburn said he was sending protest letters to top Labour Party officials to complain about the unfairness of the situation.
When local authority reorganisation took place in 1974, a total of 18 redundant signboards denoting the boundaries of Haydock, Rainford, Newton-le-Willows, Billinge, Rainhill, Eccleston etc. needed to be replaced. Some were County Borough boards resplendent with crests and others represented Urban Districts.
The Reporter said St Helens Council was considering selling some of them to members of the public, with their Borough Engineer Harry Jones telling the paper: "First the curator of the museum is to have a look at them to see if any are worth using as history examples. Some schoolchildren have also shown interest in them. After that we would consider offers if anyone wanted to buy them, because it would be a shame to leave them stored away in a compound rotting and rusting."
The Reporter also wrote: "Old cast-iron gas lamps that lined St. Helens' cobbled streets will light up the town's future." The story concerned proposals to reuse some of the remaining gas lamps that were currently being removed from the streets of the borough. A programme of removal of all remaining gas standards was presently underway, triggered not so much by a desire to embrace modernity than by a need to curb the high level of vandalism and theft. It was hoped that they could be reused on new housing estates to give them a Victorian feel, although their lamps would be powered by electricity.
The article came about after Central Modern schoolboy Jeremy Lowe of St Paul Street had rung the Reporter to complain about the removal of gas lamps from his road. The 16-year-old had said: "At the moment people are watching the workmen take them down, and they're rather upset. You don't see them any more these days, and I think they should have left one street as gas lamps to keep that ‘Coronation Street’ atmosphere."
The massive redevelopment programme that took place during the 1960s and ‘70s involving the demolition of many houses was problematic for both St Helens Council and its tenants. The latter needed to be rehoused and understandably could be choosy about the type and location of the replacement property that was being offered to them. Delays could leave a street inhabited by only a small number of residents that were still waiting to find a suitable place to live and in some cases the unoccupied houses in their road had already been demolished.
Vera Tarbuck was featured in the Reporter furious with the council who she claimed had exiled her to a wilderness of brick and mortar. Mrs Tarbuck and her husband lived in Herbert Street in Sutton and 12 months earlier a slum clearance scheme had begun there and in surrounding streets. Only four council houses in the area were still inhabited and she claimed that because of the demolition work that was taking place, her water had, at times, been cut off.
They had also sometimes to go without meals because their electricity had been turned off and there had also been flooding. But the council's response was that the couple had been offered alternative houses but they had turned them all down.
"TV licence dodgers" were also being warned that later in the month two detector vans would be in St Helens looking for evaders. And finally, from the 13th Charles Bronson's 'Death Wish' and Burt Reynolds' 'The Mean Machine' were screened in a double-bill at the ABC Savoy, while the Capitol cinema was showing 'The Exorcist'.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the Windlehurst gas explosion, the fantastic success of Parr Swimming Pool, the phantom church bell ringer, the backlog of storm damage repairs and the man who lay dead in his Parr flat for over 10 days.
We begin on the 8th at a meeting of the Area Health Authority where concerns were raised that outpatients could be deprived of medical treatment because they could not afford to travel to a clinic or hospital. The meeting heard that for most outpatient appointments, patients could not be taken in ambulances and the high cost of fares – with them having trebled in price over the last 18 months – was acting as a deterrent to going on the bus. However, it was decided that there was a need to find some alternative mode of transport to help patients, some of whom might be skipping their treatment because of the cost of travel.
The lead story in the St Helens Reporter on the 11th was that the Beth Avenue and Dominic Way Community Council had been disbanded. That was after its chairman and secretary had both resigned upon admitting having a 14-month-long affair.
Jenny Clarke of Chestnut Avenue in Haydock was praised in the paper for saving a child from drowning in the canal at Blackbrook. The drama occurred when the young mother was taking her own children for a walk. Jenny said:
"There were quite a few youngsters playing around there, and some who were running across the weir. I was shouting at them to get off when I saw a child bobbing up and down in the water. Not being able to swim, I tried to reach her from the side, but ended up falling in myself. Anyway, I managed to grab hold of the child – she was about four – and get her to safety." Two men who assisted in the rescue took the girl away but Jenny said she'd like to know if the child whose name she did not know was all right.
Mrs Fogg continued: "A man is inclined to do his day's work and think he is God when he goes home. A woman has to carry on working when she gets home from her job. Women have to put up with more pressure." She said she planned to appeal to her colleagues on the council's Personnel Sub-Committee to give female job applicants every chance.
However, the Town Clerk, Brian Lace, told the Reporter that sex was not a barrier to a woman getting a job at the Town Hall: "The best people get the jobs. It doesn't matter whether they are male or female."
The paper also described how a mother had warned that the newly pedestrianised Hardshaw Street was still a traffic hazard. Anniece Beck from Pennine Drive in Parr said she was concerned that trucks and lorries delivering goods to shops were being allowed to use Hardshaw Street: "People will be lulled into a false sense of security when they walk along the paved street. They won't be on the look-out for traffic."
The Reporter said that it had only been weeks earlier that Hardshaw Street had been covered with hundreds of paving stones but town centre shoppers had already labelled the scheme a waste of public money and it was puzzling to motorists. That was because as well as heavy vehicles having access to shops, vehicles could still call on banks and building societies.
The Reporter described how glassworkers at Pilkington's Sheet Works in Grove Street were upset with Lawrie McMenemy. The football manager's team was Southampton who in May had beaten Manchester United in the 1976 FA Cup Final. But that was not the reason for the glassmen's displeasure. There were rumours that in the light of his Wembley victory, McMenemy was going to be offered a new £15,000 a year contract.
But the government had introduced restrictions on pay rises to curb high rates of inflation. And so the Pilks' workers were described as "hopping mad" that they were restricted to a £6 pay increase but a different rule seemingly applied in football. Union secretary Bill Bradburn said he was sending protest letters to top Labour Party officials to complain about the unfairness of the situation.
When local authority reorganisation took place in 1974, a total of 18 redundant signboards denoting the boundaries of Haydock, Rainford, Newton-le-Willows, Billinge, Rainhill, Eccleston etc. needed to be replaced. Some were County Borough boards resplendent with crests and others represented Urban Districts.
The Reporter said St Helens Council was considering selling some of them to members of the public, with their Borough Engineer Harry Jones telling the paper: "First the curator of the museum is to have a look at them to see if any are worth using as history examples. Some schoolchildren have also shown interest in them. After that we would consider offers if anyone wanted to buy them, because it would be a shame to leave them stored away in a compound rotting and rusting."
The Reporter also wrote: "Old cast-iron gas lamps that lined St. Helens' cobbled streets will light up the town's future." The story concerned proposals to reuse some of the remaining gas lamps that were currently being removed from the streets of the borough. A programme of removal of all remaining gas standards was presently underway, triggered not so much by a desire to embrace modernity than by a need to curb the high level of vandalism and theft. It was hoped that they could be reused on new housing estates to give them a Victorian feel, although their lamps would be powered by electricity.
The article came about after Central Modern schoolboy Jeremy Lowe of St Paul Street had rung the Reporter to complain about the removal of gas lamps from his road. The 16-year-old had said: "At the moment people are watching the workmen take them down, and they're rather upset. You don't see them any more these days, and I think they should have left one street as gas lamps to keep that ‘Coronation Street’ atmosphere."
The massive redevelopment programme that took place during the 1960s and ‘70s involving the demolition of many houses was problematic for both St Helens Council and its tenants. The latter needed to be rehoused and understandably could be choosy about the type and location of the replacement property that was being offered to them. Delays could leave a street inhabited by only a small number of residents that were still waiting to find a suitable place to live and in some cases the unoccupied houses in their road had already been demolished.
Vera Tarbuck was featured in the Reporter furious with the council who she claimed had exiled her to a wilderness of brick and mortar. Mrs Tarbuck and her husband lived in Herbert Street in Sutton and 12 months earlier a slum clearance scheme had begun there and in surrounding streets. Only four council houses in the area were still inhabited and she claimed that because of the demolition work that was taking place, her water had, at times, been cut off.
They had also sometimes to go without meals because their electricity had been turned off and there had also been flooding. But the council's response was that the couple had been offered alternative houses but they had turned them all down.
"TV licence dodgers" were also being warned that later in the month two detector vans would be in St Helens looking for evaders. And finally, from the 13th Charles Bronson's 'Death Wish' and Burt Reynolds' 'The Mean Machine' were screened in a double-bill at the ABC Savoy, while the Capitol cinema was showing 'The Exorcist'.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the Windlehurst gas explosion, the fantastic success of Parr Swimming Pool, the phantom church bell ringer, the backlog of storm damage repairs and the man who lay dead in his Parr flat for over 10 days.
This week's many stories include the concerns over the pedestrianisation of Hardshaw Street, the canal rescue of a child at Blackbrook, a call for more women to hold senior positions in St Helens Town Hall, how gas lamps could be making a comeback and why Pilks' workers were upset with football boss Lawrie McMenemy.
We begin on the 8th at a meeting of the Area Health Authority where concerns were raised that outpatients could be deprived of medical treatment because they could not afford to travel to a clinic or hospital.
The meeting heard that for most outpatient appointments, patients could not be taken in ambulances and the high cost of fares – with them having trebled in price over the last 18 months – was acting as a deterrent to going on the bus.
However, it was decided that there was a need to find some alternative mode of transport to help patients, some of whom might be skipping their treatment because of the cost of travel.
The lead story in the St Helens Reporter on the 11th was that the Beth Avenue and Dominic Way Community Council had been disbanded.
That was after its chairman and secretary had both resigned upon admitting having a 14-month-long affair.
Jenny Clarke of Chestnut Avenue in Haydock was praised in the paper for saving a child from drowning in the canal at Blackbrook.
The drama occurred when the young mother was taking her own children for a walk. Jenny said:
"There were quite a few youngsters playing around there, and some who were running across the weir. I was shouting at them to get off when I saw a child bobbing up and down in the water.
"Not being able to swim, I tried to reach her from the side, but ended up falling in myself. Anyway, I managed to grab hold of the child – she was about four – and get her to safety."
Two men who assisted in the rescue took the girl away but Jenny said she'd like to know if the child whose name she did not know was all right.
Councillor Dorothy Fogg told the Reporter that St Helens Town Hall needed more women in senior positions.
"A good woman is often head and shoulders above any male", she remarked.
Currently, there was only one female chief officer employed by St Helens Council.
She was Hilda Nock who became the Deputy Director of Libraries, Museums and Arts in 1974.
Mrs Fogg continued: "A man is inclined to do his day's work and think he is God when he goes home. A woman has to carry on working when she gets home from her job. Women have to put up with more pressure."
She said she planned to appeal to her colleagues on the council's Personnel Sub-Committee to give female job applicants every chance.
However, the Town Clerk, Brian Lace, told the Reporter that sex was not a barrier to a woman getting a job at the Town Hall:
"The best people get the jobs. It doesn't matter whether they are male or female."
The paper also described how a mother had warned that the newly pedestrianised Hardshaw Street was still a traffic hazard.
Anniece Beck from Pennine Drive in Parr said she was concerned that trucks and lorries delivering goods to shops were being allowed to use Hardshaw Street:
"People will be lulled into a false sense of security when they walk along the paved street. They won't be on the look-out for traffic."
The Reporter said that it had only been weeks earlier that Hardshaw Street had been covered with hundreds of paving stones but town centre shoppers had already labelled the scheme a waste of public money and it was puzzling to motorists.
That was because as well as heavy vehicles having access to shops, vehicles could still call on banks and building societies.
The Reporter described how glassworkers at Pilkington's Sheet Works in Grove Street were upset with Lawrie McMenemy.
The football manager's team was Southampton who in May had beaten Manchester United in the 1976 FA Cup Final.
But that was not the reason for the glassmen's displeasure. There were rumours that in the light of his Wembley victory, McMenemy was going to be offered a new £15,000 a year contract.
But the government had introduced restrictions on pay rises to curb high rates of inflation.
And so the Pilks' workers were described as "hopping mad" that they were restricted to a £6 pay increase but a different rule seemingly applied in football.
Union secretary Bill Bradburn said he was sending protest letters to top Labour Party officials to complain about the unfairness of the situation.
When local authority reorganisation took place in 1974, a total of 18 redundant signboards denoting the boundaries of Haydock, Rainford, Newton-le-Willows, Billinge, Rainhill, Eccleston etc. needed to be replaced.
Some were County Borough boards resplendent with crests and others represented Urban Districts.
The Reporter said St Helens Council was considering selling some of them to members of the public, with their Borough Engineer Harry Jones telling the paper:
"First the curator of the museum is to have a look at them to see if any are worth using as history examples. Some schoolchildren have also shown interest in them.
"After that we would consider offers if anyone wanted to buy them, because it would be a shame to leave them stored away in a compound rotting and rusting."
The Reporter also wrote: "Old cast-iron gas lamps that lined St. Helens' cobbled streets will light up the town's future."
The story concerned proposals to reuse some of the remaining gas lamps that were currently being removed from the streets of the borough.
A programme of removal of all remaining gas standards was presently underway, triggered not so much by a desire to embrace modernity than by a need to curb the high level of vandalism and theft.
It was hoped that they could be reused on new housing estates to give them a Victorian feel, although their lamps would be powered by electricity.
The article came about after Central Modern schoolboy Jeremy Lowe of St Paul Street had rung the Reporter to complain about the removal of gas lamps from his road.
The 16-year-old had said: "At the moment people are watching the workmen take them down, and they're rather upset. You don't see them any more these days, and I think they should have left one street as gas lamps to keep that ‘Coronation Street’ atmosphere."
The massive redevelopment programme that took place during the 1960s and ‘70s involving the demolition of many houses was problematic for both St Helens Council and its tenants.
The latter needed to be rehoused and understandably could be choosy about the type and location of the replacement property that was being offered to them.
Delays could leave a street inhabited by only a small number of residents that were still waiting to find a suitable place to live and in some cases the unoccupied houses in their road had already been demolished.
Vera Tarbuck was featured in the Reporter furious with the council who she claimed had exiled her to a wilderness of brick and mortar.
Mrs Tarbuck and her husband lived in Herbert Street in Sutton and 12 months earlier a slum clearance scheme had begun there and in surrounding streets.
Only four council houses in the area were still inhabited and she claimed that because of the demolition work that was taking place, her water had, at times, been cut off.
They had also sometimes to go without meals because their electricity had been turned off and there had also been flooding.
But the council's response was that the couple had been offered alternative houses but they had turned them all down.
"TV licence dodgers" were also being warned that later in the month two detector vans would be in St Helens looking for evaders.
And finally, from the 13th Charles Bronson's 'Death Wish' and Burt Reynolds' 'The Mean Machine' were screened in a double-bill at the ABC Savoy, while the Capitol cinema was showing 'The Exorcist'.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the Windlehurst gas explosion, the fantastic success of Parr Swimming Pool, the phantom church bell ringer, the backlog of storm damage repairs and the man who lay dead in his Parr flat for over 10 days.
We begin on the 8th at a meeting of the Area Health Authority where concerns were raised that outpatients could be deprived of medical treatment because they could not afford to travel to a clinic or hospital.
The meeting heard that for most outpatient appointments, patients could not be taken in ambulances and the high cost of fares – with them having trebled in price over the last 18 months – was acting as a deterrent to going on the bus.
However, it was decided that there was a need to find some alternative mode of transport to help patients, some of whom might be skipping their treatment because of the cost of travel.
The lead story in the St Helens Reporter on the 11th was that the Beth Avenue and Dominic Way Community Council had been disbanded.
That was after its chairman and secretary had both resigned upon admitting having a 14-month-long affair.
Jenny Clarke of Chestnut Avenue in Haydock was praised in the paper for saving a child from drowning in the canal at Blackbrook.
The drama occurred when the young mother was taking her own children for a walk. Jenny said:
"There were quite a few youngsters playing around there, and some who were running across the weir. I was shouting at them to get off when I saw a child bobbing up and down in the water.
"Not being able to swim, I tried to reach her from the side, but ended up falling in myself. Anyway, I managed to grab hold of the child – she was about four – and get her to safety."
Two men who assisted in the rescue took the girl away but Jenny said she'd like to know if the child whose name she did not know was all right.
"A good woman is often head and shoulders above any male", she remarked.
Currently, there was only one female chief officer employed by St Helens Council.
She was Hilda Nock who became the Deputy Director of Libraries, Museums and Arts in 1974.
Mrs Fogg continued: "A man is inclined to do his day's work and think he is God when he goes home. A woman has to carry on working when she gets home from her job. Women have to put up with more pressure."
She said she planned to appeal to her colleagues on the council's Personnel Sub-Committee to give female job applicants every chance.
However, the Town Clerk, Brian Lace, told the Reporter that sex was not a barrier to a woman getting a job at the Town Hall:
"The best people get the jobs. It doesn't matter whether they are male or female."
The paper also described how a mother had warned that the newly pedestrianised Hardshaw Street was still a traffic hazard.
Anniece Beck from Pennine Drive in Parr said she was concerned that trucks and lorries delivering goods to shops were being allowed to use Hardshaw Street:
"People will be lulled into a false sense of security when they walk along the paved street. They won't be on the look-out for traffic."
The Reporter said that it had only been weeks earlier that Hardshaw Street had been covered with hundreds of paving stones but town centre shoppers had already labelled the scheme a waste of public money and it was puzzling to motorists.
That was because as well as heavy vehicles having access to shops, vehicles could still call on banks and building societies.
The Reporter described how glassworkers at Pilkington's Sheet Works in Grove Street were upset with Lawrie McMenemy.
The football manager's team was Southampton who in May had beaten Manchester United in the 1976 FA Cup Final.
But that was not the reason for the glassmen's displeasure. There were rumours that in the light of his Wembley victory, McMenemy was going to be offered a new £15,000 a year contract.
But the government had introduced restrictions on pay rises to curb high rates of inflation.
And so the Pilks' workers were described as "hopping mad" that they were restricted to a £6 pay increase but a different rule seemingly applied in football.
Union secretary Bill Bradburn said he was sending protest letters to top Labour Party officials to complain about the unfairness of the situation.
When local authority reorganisation took place in 1974, a total of 18 redundant signboards denoting the boundaries of Haydock, Rainford, Newton-le-Willows, Billinge, Rainhill, Eccleston etc. needed to be replaced.
Some were County Borough boards resplendent with crests and others represented Urban Districts.
The Reporter said St Helens Council was considering selling some of them to members of the public, with their Borough Engineer Harry Jones telling the paper:
"First the curator of the museum is to have a look at them to see if any are worth using as history examples. Some schoolchildren have also shown interest in them.
"After that we would consider offers if anyone wanted to buy them, because it would be a shame to leave them stored away in a compound rotting and rusting."
The Reporter also wrote: "Old cast-iron gas lamps that lined St. Helens' cobbled streets will light up the town's future."
The story concerned proposals to reuse some of the remaining gas lamps that were currently being removed from the streets of the borough.
A programme of removal of all remaining gas standards was presently underway, triggered not so much by a desire to embrace modernity than by a need to curb the high level of vandalism and theft.
It was hoped that they could be reused on new housing estates to give them a Victorian feel, although their lamps would be powered by electricity.
The article came about after Central Modern schoolboy Jeremy Lowe of St Paul Street had rung the Reporter to complain about the removal of gas lamps from his road.
The 16-year-old had said: "At the moment people are watching the workmen take them down, and they're rather upset. You don't see them any more these days, and I think they should have left one street as gas lamps to keep that ‘Coronation Street’ atmosphere."
The massive redevelopment programme that took place during the 1960s and ‘70s involving the demolition of many houses was problematic for both St Helens Council and its tenants.
The latter needed to be rehoused and understandably could be choosy about the type and location of the replacement property that was being offered to them.
Delays could leave a street inhabited by only a small number of residents that were still waiting to find a suitable place to live and in some cases the unoccupied houses in their road had already been demolished.
Vera Tarbuck was featured in the Reporter furious with the council who she claimed had exiled her to a wilderness of brick and mortar.
Mrs Tarbuck and her husband lived in Herbert Street in Sutton and 12 months earlier a slum clearance scheme had begun there and in surrounding streets.
Only four council houses in the area were still inhabited and she claimed that because of the demolition work that was taking place, her water had, at times, been cut off.
They had also sometimes to go without meals because their electricity had been turned off and there had also been flooding.
But the council's response was that the couple had been offered alternative houses but they had turned them all down.
"TV licence dodgers" were also being warned that later in the month two detector vans would be in St Helens looking for evaders.
And finally, from the 13th Charles Bronson's 'Death Wish' and Burt Reynolds' 'The Mean Machine' were screened in a double-bill at the ABC Savoy, while the Capitol cinema was showing 'The Exorcist'.
St Helens Reporter courtesy St Helens Archive Service at Eccleston Library
Next Week's stories will include the Windlehurst gas explosion, the fantastic success of Parr Swimming Pool, the phantom church bell ringer, the backlog of storm damage repairs and the man who lay dead in his Parr flat for over 10 days.