10 YEARS AGO

Homes help: Work on a £2.5m programme to regenerate the east end of Hexham to begin later in the year was announced. Just weeks after gaining permission for a £1m housing development nearby, social housing provider Milecastle aimed to improve around 200 homes with a £1.5m rejuvenation fund.

Election Count: Plans to hold the count for the Hexham seat in the general election in Cramlington were scrapped. Tory hopeful Guy Opperman said: “We were livid at the suggestion. It was just another example of the unitary authority taking powers away from Hexham.”

Dogged developer: A developer was refusing to take no for an answer over his plans for a major holiday development on a derelict brickworks site at Langley. The scheme, likened to a Center Parcs village, received 94 objections from local residents.

Code breaker: A Haltwhistle pensioner was honoured for his code cracking intelligence which helped secure victory in the Second World War. James Mitchell Bradley, who served at Bletchley Park, received a special badge of honour for the work.

25 YEARS AGO

PIGEON PURGE: A Hexham father-of-two destroyed his entire flock of prize racing pigeons - and claimed he had to do it to save his family from eviction from their home. A distraught Tommy Shield defended his drastic actions, claiming it was either a choice of destroying the birds or watching his girlfriend and their two young children put out of their council-owned house.

RESIDENTS RAGE: Tynedale Council denied claims that it turned Hexham’s Bondgate Close into a “ghetto” by deliberately allocating council houses there to some of its more troublesome tenants. One resident said a disproportionate number of houses had gone to people known to be trouble-makers and who had subsequently made their neighbours’ lives a misery.

CAT-ASTROPHIC CIRCUMSTANCE: Fickle feline Ginger Pudding, the resident cat at the Blackcock Inn in Falstone, was a whisker away from losing one of her nine lives when she hitched a lift on the brewery delivery dray to end up at a rival boozer 15 miles away.

Rugby Rampage: A Hexham Courant report on Tynedale Rugby club’s 45-0 thrashing against Liverpool St Helens said: “Fans of the team in blue and white should avoid Corbridge at all costs, if they do not want to see their side ripped apart.”

50 YEARS AGO

BRIDGE RUMPUS: Corbridge residents urged the Ministry of Transport to press ahead with the proposed bypass road to Hexham as soon as possible instead of first putting up a temporary wooden bridge next to the existing Tyne bridge, as had been suggested.

INAUGURAL VISIT: Hexham played host to a party of children from its French twin town, Saint Lunaire, for the first time.

WALK SUCCESS: A 20-mile sponsored walk held by Tynedale Rugby Club raised £400 for club funds.

DEAR DINNERS: The price of school meals in Northumberland rose to 1s 9d - a three pence increase.

75 YEARS AGO

FUGITIVE DROWNED: An escaped German prisoner of war was found drowned in the River Tyne near Hexham.

GERMAN VISIT: Hexham MP Col D. Clifton Brown, the Speaker of the House of Commons, paid a visit to a British army field headquarters in Germany.

100 YEARS AGO

BOG STANDARD: Falstone School came in for strong criticism following a visit by a sanitary inspector. The 62-pupil school’s toilet facilities - “privy middens” and a smelly stone trough that discharged directly into the ground - were said to be completely inadequate.

INSTITUTE ACQUIRED: The Comrades of the Great War’s Haltwhistle branch took over the town’s Garibaldi Inn, in Main Street, and set up a social club and institute there.

125 YEARS AGO

RABIES OFFENCES: Two Tynedale men were fined five shillings each for breaching a rabies order imposed by Hexham magistrates, by walking their dogs without leads.

SHOP BLAZE: Fire broke out at a joiner’s shop in Back Street, Hexham, and spread to four other neighbouring shops.

JOBS SHED: Some 90 miners employed at Low Prudhoe Colliery were laid off because of “slackness of trade”.

150 Years Ago

COLLIERY CATASTROPHE: A serious accident happened at Hedley Colliery to a pitman, while he was in the act of hewing a large piece of coal. It fell from the roof upon his legs, which broke one of them completely in two and displaced several of the leaders of the foot.

PETITION PRESENTED: Mr WB Beaumont presented a Hexham Farmers’ Club petition in favour of the total abolition of the Game Laws.