11:57am Monday 15th February 2010
By Michael Grundy
THIS WEEK IN 1990:
CITY councillors have shelved plans to twin Worcester with a Third World or Eastern Bloc city.
Instead, it is proposed to forge even stronger links with the German town of Kleve with which Worcester has been twinned since 1987.
The Worcester Twinning Association pointed out to the council that locations in Eastern Europe, Israel or a Third World country would not be suitable for regular exchange visits.
● In the month it celebrates its 150th anniversary, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra will be in Worcester to perform at a major gala concert. This is being held in the cathedral in aid of the £4 million restoration appeal for the ancient building and will be on the evening of March 2. The RLPO counts among its famous past principal conductors Sir Henry Wood, Sir Thomas Beecham, Sir Malcolm Sargent and Sir Charles Groves.
For its Worcester concert under its present principal conductor Libor Pesek, the RLPO will play Beethoven’s 5th Symphony and Elgar’s Enigma Variations and Pomp and Circumstance March No.1.
THIS WEEK IN 1980:
THE cleared site of the former Worcester Electricity Works at the corner of Hylton Road and Tybridge Street has been given top priority in the list of works to be carried out by the city council. The land was bought by the council last year for about £100,000. The intention is to use it as an extension of Cripplegate Park and to provide additional much-needed recreational and community facilities for Worcester’s Westside.
● Malvern Hills District Council has agreed terms with the Church Commissioners for the purchase of the Old Bell Tower at Upton-upon- Severn. The landmark, known affectionately by locals as the “Pepperpot,”
has been bought for use as a heritage and information centre and for other community purposes.
THIS WEEK IN 1970:
OUR fame as the oldest newspaper is at present receiving wide publicity through an unexpected medium – potato crisps! On the back of packets of Walker’s crisps is written: “Berrow’s Worcester Journal is the oldest continuously published newspaper in the world. Originally called the Worcester Post Man, it was founded in 1690 and has been published regularly since June 1709.”
THIS WEEK IN 1960:
LAST month was the wettest January in Worcester since 1884 with recorded rainfall of 5.35 inches. In those 76 years, on only two other occasions has the rainfall at Worcester in January exceeded five inches. This was in 1939 when 5.23 inches fell and in 1943 when rainfall of 5.05 inches was recorded.
● From Crowquill’s Berrow’s Journal Jottings: The highly successful British film I’m All Right, Jack, which is currently being shown at various cinemas in the county, was, I am told, booed off the screen at a cinema in the industrial Midlands. I fail to understand this.
The film certainly pokes fun at the workers but it takes the mickey out of the management as well.
I found it very amusing indeed. Ours is mainly an agricultural area and to many of us industrial relations are quite foreign.
But I am sure that no one would be so stupid as to object to a clever comedy which featured land workers and farmers in a similar manner. Apparently tempers don’t run so high in rural areas.
© Copyright 2001-2012 Newsquest Media Group
http://www.worcesternews.co.uk/trade_directory/