10 YEARS AGO

RAW DEAL: The financial state of some Tynedale schools was laid bare, with headteachers revealing they were struggling to make ends meet due to the way schools were funded, described as a “postcode lottery”.

PAY UP: Bailiffs acting on behalf of Leeds City Council sent six separate letters to Hughie and Gloria Milburn demanding £1,000 in unpaid parking fines – allegedly clocked up by Hughie’s 50-year-old Massey Ferguson tractor that hadn’t left Birtley for a year.

MONKEYING AROUND: Matfen Hall became the first venue in the North-East to launch a Go Ape high wire adventure course high in the trees around the hotel, creating 15 new jobs.

BIKE THEFT: Thieves scaled a first floor balcony in Wylam during a daring night time raid to steal two mountain bikes worth £7,000.

25 YEARS AGO

CITY SIZED: Hexham and Haltwhistle’s drug problem was as bad per head as it was in Newcastle and South Shields, according to Detective Constable Cohn Fleming of Sunderland drug squad.

CALLOUS CROOKS: Thieves stole a computer from Hexham Hospital that offered a communication lifeline to patients suffering paralysis from spinal injuries. The computer allowed patients to write letters, draw pictures, and play games by blowing and sucking into a tube.

BELLWAY OUTRAGE: Plans by construction giants Bellway Homes to build 500 houses in the west end of Hexham caused outrage in the town, with complaints flooding into Northumberland County Council’s planning officers.

HAPPY REUNION: Nurses who had worked together in the Second World War kept their VE day promise to meet up every two years, and got together for a reunion at the home of Elizabeth Horlington in Hexham.

50 YEARS AGO

NORTH CHOICE: A special meeting of Hexham Urban Council accepted the “Northern Line” as the best of three proposed routes for the Hexham by-pass.

JOB HUNTERS: Prudhoe urban councillors were keeping tight-lipped about a hush-hush trip to Europe to look for jobs for the town.

OH DEER: A retired man in his early 70s was attacked by a deer at his allotment in Wylam. That animal had been raised as a pet by a family and recently returned to the wild.

WATER SPORTS: A proposed storage reservoir in the North Tyne Valley at Otterstone would allow boating and yachting, but only limited trout fishing, an official stated.

75 YEARS AGO

NO EXCUSES: For members of Bellingham Rural Council, who had not attended a single council meeting all year, were sacked by the council.

DRAGON SLAYERS: A parade by the Hexham branch of the British Legion preceded a special St. George’s Day service at St. John Lee.

ESCAPE ARTIST: A Royal Norwegian Navy Officer told a large audience in Allendale about his escape from the Gestapo in the Nazi-occupied country.

100 YEARS AGO

TOO LOW: A coroner’s court asked the county council to raise the wall near the Allendale Inn after a drinker fell over it and died of concussion and shock.

HONOURED MEN: Nearly 100 servicemen were entertained and presented with medals on their return to civilian life in Corbridge.

LIBBERS MEET: The annual meeting of the Hexham Society for Women’s Suffrage was held at the Alexander Cafe.

125 YEARS AGO

NOT PEACEFUL: A Haltwhistle man, whose threats to kill his wife had forced her to seek sanctuary in the workhouse, was bound over to keep the peace.

ENGINEERING BUG: The Bishop of Nyasaland in Africa expressed concerns that a 51-year-old Wark man, about to engineer a steamer on Nyasa, might catch malaria.

COAL COMFORT: Coanwood Colliery, which experts had thought was exhausted of coal, was saved by the discovery of two new seams.

150 YEARS AGO

EARLY BEE: A swarm of bees appeared at Edmundbyers. The oldest resident in the village said he never knew a swarm arrive so early.

SPRING SWALLOWS: Several flocks of swallows were seen in Hexham, signalling the arrival of spring.

CLOSURE RUMOUR: There was talk in certain quarters that an application was to be made to the Home Office to close Corbridge churchyard closed for further interments due to the crowded nature of the burial ground.

DANGEROUS HABIT: A Courant correspondent wrote about a dangerous habit engaged in by the people of Hexham, and that he hoped the Board of Health would make an example of the first person they found “indulging in this reprehensible practice”. The habit in question was throwing orange peel on the ground.