100 years ago

OUR missing summer has at last turned up. How long it means to stay with us is the doubtful point; but the heat of the past few days was certainly more than we had bargained for. Mark Twain was about right when he said we had no real climate in England, only samples of weather. Malvern Gazette, July 20, 1900.

THERE is an admirable society called the Soldiers and Sailors Help Society for helping discharged soldiers and providing homes for the crippled and convalescent. In connection with it, the Ledbury Branch of the Children's' Penny Band was formed last month, and as a result of a thorough organisation on behalf of the noble object, the very satisfactory sum of £10 18s and 1d was raised by the children, this amount representing 2,617 pennies. Ledbury Free Press, July 24, 1900.

50 years ago

IT must be rather heartbreaking for the residents of the council estates in Cotswold Road and Mendip Close to see their cabbages being literally devoured before their eyes by stray cattle. Hearing that this was happening, I strolled the other day to the area and, whether it was a coincidence or not, Pickersleigh Road looked more like a cattle market. Malvern Gazette, July 21, 1950.

MANY holiday-makers had narrow escapes when two coaches came into collision at the Upper Cross, Ledbury, on Tuesday evening. One coach owned by Gliderways, returning to Birmingham, from a trip to Barry, when turning from New Street towards Worcester Road collided with a coach belonging to Messrs Owen, of Knighton, travelling from The Southend. The Birmingham coach was struck broadside, the fuel tank being shattered. Some of the passengers were severely shaken, but no one was injured. Ledbury Reporter, July 21, 1950.

25 years ago

DING, dong bell - Murphy's down the well. And it took all the ingenuity of Malvern Fire Station Officer Mike Ginger to get the nine-month-old pussycat out again on Sunday afternoon.

Murphy fell down a disused 30-foot well at the home of her owner, Mrs Pat Wild, of Lansdowne Crescent, Malvern.

Things looked grim until Station Officer Ginger came up with a plan for saving Murphy...a shopping basket with a bowl of catfood inside was lowered down, in jumped Murphy after her supper, and up she came none the worse. Malvern Gazette, July 24, 1975.

BISHOP Hugh Foliot, fully restored to health, is safely back. In 1232 he founded the Hospital of St Kathe-rine of Alexandria in Ledbury, for the relief of wayfarers and the poor and needy folk of the parish. Three and a half centuries later, an artist painted a picture of him. This hung in the Masters House until 1963 when our local council banished him to an outhouse. Rescued after the restoration of St Katherine's Hall, be was at last given worthy lodging in the Chapel. Ledbury Reporter, July 24, 1975.