100 Years Ago

FOR some reason the parishioners of Dent were sorely upset at the police. The Dent annual parish meeting passed the following resolution: "The township of Dent offers a respectful protest to the Chief Constable of the West Riding against the petty, paltry and vexatious charges brought by the police in cases of respectable and respected inhabitants and begs the Chief Constable to order a discontinuance of the same".

The Herald had a suggestion for the future of Whinnygill Reservoir now that agreement had been reached to build a new reservoir to supply the town at Embsay. The Herald said that as local anglers had no access to fishing rights on the river Aire and had to travel many miles for fishing, the reservoir should be given over to angling, which is what happened.

50 Years Ago

THE new phone exchange at Skipton was to be switched on and more than 2,000 subscribers would have a new number. The Herald's old number of 800 was going, to be replaced by 2577. Fifty years on and it's still our number (with the prefix of 79).

In what the Herald described as the first case of its kind in the area, a man was fined 10 shillings under a new West Riding byelaw for allowing his dog to foul the streets. The 18-year-old apprentice joiner from Cumberland Street said he did not realise it was an offence.

Work began on transforming a piece of ground on Otley Street into a rest garden, similar to the one which had been constructed the previous year on Otley Street. The project was funded by Skipton Soroptimists.

25 Years Ago

AN election was called and Burnaby Drayson was not standing after holding the Skipton seat for 35 years. John Watson, who then lived in Carleton, was the new Conservative candidate while Claire Brooks, who at the last election had reduced the Conservative majority to less than 600 votes, was again representing the Liberals.

This was the "winter of discontent" which helped bring Margaret Thatcher to power and in Skipton strikes meant that nurses were doing the laundry at local hospitals while soldiers from the Royal Hussars were driving ambulances.

Althams manager Vic Smith was astounded when a tiger turned up at his office in Skipton. The travel agency was selling tickets for Cornell's Circus in Aireville. The circus people turned up with Tara, a three month old cub and the daughter of Martha, the tiger who featured in the Esso ads.

Settle Rotary Club celebrated its 50th anniversary with a special meal at the Falcon. Among those there was the sole surviving founder member, Mr FH Ellis.

10 Years Ago

MASKED men carried out a daring raid on Grassington Post Office. They burst into the flat of Linda Robinson above the post office at 5.30am and tied her up before postmaster David Helm arrived about 8.30am. He too was tied up and the safe opened before the robbers fled with cash, leaving Mr Helm and Miss Robinson still bound. The robbery came to light when Mrs Helm arrived just after 9am to find a queue of people wondering why the post office remained closed.

The Britannia Building Society was paying the cost of closing its Silsden branch. Skipton Building Society welcomed its 1,000th customer transferring from Britannia since it announced the closure just six weeks previously. Peggy Wade was presented with a range of gifts and she spoke for the vast majority of ex-Britannia customers when she said she did not want a trip to Keighley or beyond everytime she wanted to draw a few pounds from her savings account.

The new £3.5 million road bridge at Bolton Abbey was opened. It replaced the narrow bridge, a listed building, which dated from the 17th century but which had to carry late 20th century juggernauts. The old bridge had been strengthened previously but that was only a temporary measure.

Cononley Gala was in danger of folding after three committee members stood down and a public meeting to find replacements attracted precisely no-one. The village had plans to equip Cononley playground with £30,000 worth of new equipment but the bulk of the money was due to come from the gala.