10 YEARS AGO

HISTORIC FACELIFT: Proposals to provide a new visitor attraction at Housesteads Roman Fort, near Bardon Mill, were set to be unveiled. The public were given the opportunity to choose how the visitor experience would be enhanced through a consultation exercise.

CLUB UNVEILED: Tynedale-based entrepreneur Graham Wylie unveiled plans for a massive expansion of Close House Country Club, with the businessman and racehorse owner set to plough in £7.5m into the property near Wylam.

TOWN TWINNING: Former Hexham MP Alan Amos made headlines after trying to set up a town twinning agreement between his new home in Worcester and war-torn Gaza City.

TAXI ROW: Worried parents slammed Northumberland County Council for awarding school transport contracts to taxi drivers with criminal convictions.

25 YEARS AGO

MP SNUB: Campaigners battling to save Hexham’s main post office from privatisation reacted angrily to what they claimed was a snub from MP Peter Atkinson, after he claimed that Hexham people had been misled about the future of the service in the town.

PIGEON PROBLEMS: A Hexham pigeon owner erected a pigeon loft in his back garden after a planning officer told him he did not need permission, only for officials to demand he take it down again.

FALLOUT PLOT: A nuclear radiation measuring station that could monitor the path of any fallout from a leakage incident was set up in Hexham.

MIRACLE BABY: Holly Barbara Newell, who weighed less than two bounds when she was born prematurely, was set to come home.

50 YEARS AGO

BOOGIE NIGHTS: Hexham Urban Council agreed to let a mobile disco into the Moot Hall on Sunday nights, with all profits going to cancer research.

MONOCHROME MELODIES: The Rio Cinema in Prudhoe was packed out when the Gosforth Girls’ Choir gave their version of “The Black and White Minstrel Show.”

75 YEARS AGO

CHANCE MEETING: A Maori officer who fought in one of the last battles of the First World War met an old comrade by chance, when he spoke to Hexham Rotarians. Guest speaker Tawera Moana and Captain C.H Watson swapped battlefield experiences some 25 years after fighting in the Canal du Nord.

WORKS PLAN: Councillors from Haydon Bridge contacted the Northern Industrial Group amid fears that post-war light industries might pass the village by.

CLERIC’S CLASH: The Rector of Allendale was given a £110 cheque from parishioners at a ceremony to mark his silver jubilee there.

CLUCK CLINK: At a special court in Haltwhistle, two men were remanded in custody on a charge of stealing 10 Rhode Island hens from Coanwood.

100 YEARS AGO

GIFTS GALORE: Hundreds of presents were given to Captain H.G. Straker, of Fourstones, and Miss Cecilia Peel at their fashionable wedding took place in London.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: A member of Hexham Urban Council asked that unemployed ex-servicemen should be given work in street-making.

RECKLESS COUNCIL: As county council elections took place, the Courant commented: “Ratepayers are beginning to view the future with gloomy forebodings should the extravagance of the county body remain unchecked.”

125 YEARS AGO

BOY HERO: An eight-year-old boy was rescued by his father after being swept into the river at Haydon Bridge. The boy had jumped in to to save a toddler, aged two, who was later found dead.

NINETIES WOMAN: Alston’s oldest inhabitant, born in 1796, died in the workhouse. Mrs Ann Shield retained the use of all her faculties until the end, it was reported.

150 YEARS AGO

TURNIP TALES: The subject up for discussion at the Hexham Farmers’ Club was the “season remarkable for the failure of the turnip crop.”

RECLUSIVE COUNTESS: The so-called Countess of Derwentwater, who tried to claim Dilston Castle as her inheritance, was now living almost the life of a recluse, it was reported. However, she had agreed to patronize the Working Men’s Temperance Club of Blaydon, and gave them a valuable picture.

WALK OVER: Contrary to expectations, there looked like there wasn’t going to be a contest in the 1869 Local Board elections, with the three sitting members having a “walk over”.

LIVING DEATH: A man who was attacked in his home in Bellingham was slowing recovering. However, there were fears that the man was doomed to “a living death.” The Courant reported: “His mental faculties are totally obscured and his ravings are those of an idiot.”