March 22 - 29

9:32am Tuesday 25th March 2008

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This week in 1978:

TWO Martley girls kicked a live mortar shell down a hill - and lived to tell the tale. What they believed to be a rusty metal container was taken to an isolated field on Monday and exploded by Army bomb disposal experts.

Anne Jackson of New Bungalow, Martley, and her friend Jane Tomkins of Lawn Cottage, Martley, both aged 14 and pupils of the Chantry School, found the object when walking through a coppice at Berrow Hill, near Martley.

Anne Jackson said: "We kicked it all the way down the hill and took it home to Jane's mother, who put it in the sink and rubbed the covering and dirt from it to discover to her shock that it might be a bomb. She called in the police, who in turn sent for the bomb disposal people."

The mortar shell is believed to have dated from the First World War but it remains a mystery how it came to be on Berrow Hill.

This week in 1968:Abberton Church which had its spire removed because it was deemed a danger to low flying aircraft landing at a nearby airfield, now has a vintage clock gracing its tower. It has been donated by WRH Peplow of the Worcester jewellers. He lives at Abberton and is churchwarden. The eight-day clock, with its hourly striking mechanism, was made at Birmingham in 1890.

* Objectors battled for the retention of rail passenger services between Stratford-on-Avon and Worcester at Thursday's public hearing of the Transport Users Consultative Committee in Worcester. They were also fighting to prevent the closure of the Pershore and Honeybourne stations which cannot stay open if the Stratford to Worcester services are ended. British Rail proposes to withdraw the services principally because the loss of revenue involved. BR states that the line earns just £14,700 a year compared with the annual cost of £43,700 to keep it open.

This week in 1958:There are fears at the Shirehall that under a future reorganisation of local government, three Worcestershire boroughs - Oldbury, Halesowen and Stourbridge - will be lost to the county. At present these three important boroughs contain a third of Worcestershire's population and contribute a third to its public money. (Oldbury, Halesowen and Stourbridge were, in fact, taken from Worcestershire in the 1973 nationwide reorganisation of local government which created the new Hereford and Worcester County Council).

* Work is to begin next month on the construction of the new Ross Spur motorway from Strensham to Ross-on-Wye. Contractors will start laying the first 3.2 mile stretch at a cost of £1,732,000.

* An allowance of £2 will be made for your own old gas cooker when placing an order for a new model at the local gas service centre of the West Midlands Gas Board.