10 YEARS AGO

JOBS LOST: A Tynedale business which manufactures and distributes replacement car body panels was preparing to call in administrators, it was reported. Hadrian Car Panels, in Fourstones, which had been trading for 35 years, had already shed 10 jobs, with a further 60 jobs around the country also under threat.

NATIONAL AWARD: Healey's picturesque parish church outshone giants like Canterbury Cathedral to pick up a national award. St John's Church earned praise for its two commemorative windows.

25 YEARS AGO

SPORTS BOOST: It was reported that a sports area was to be created behind Corbridge parish hall. The parish hall management committee wanted to convert the redundant land behind the land into an area where a whole range of activities can take place, including five-a-side football, netball and tennis.

TAX INCREASE: Council finance officers predicted the next year's Council Tax bills were likely to be 10 per cent higher than that year's. The Government had just unveiled its Budget, and although both Northumberland County Council and Tynedale District Council would be allowed to spend more, they claimed that the small increases in their Standard Spending Assessment would be more than swallowed up by inflation.

50 YEARS AGO

SECRET INQUIRY UPROAR: The Department of the Environment came in for criticism from Hexham Rural Council for holding a public inquiry into an objection against the compulsory purchase of land at Greenwich Gardens, Haydon Bridge, in secret.

LAST ORDERS: St Cuthbert's Church at Haydon Bridge decided against holding a Christmas Eve midnight mass that year because of drunken disorder at the previous year's service. Then vicar Alec Beniams said: "Last year the service was spoiled by the presence of a few people who had begun celebrating too early and were unpleasantly drunk in church. In almost any other place, to be drunk on Christmas Eve would not be out of order, but holy communion is a sacrament and must be safeguarded from abuse by people who merely regard their visit to church on Christmas Eve as the last port of call before final and total collapse."

INSPECTOR BOWS OUT: Mr W.G. Tweddle retired as Prudhoe Urban Council's public health inspector after 25 years in that post.

ROYAL VISIT: Princess Anne visited Prudhoe to officially open the town's Kimberly-Clark plant.

75 YEARS AGO

REVELLERS RAPPED: Haltwhistle magistrates fined 25 people 10 shillings apiece for drinking beer, gin and cider outside permitted hours at Featherstone's Wallace Arms Hotel. These defendants, mostly women, some of them pensioners, were caught red-handed drinking and playing dominoes at the unacceptable hour of 6.35pm, the court heard. The pub's then landlord William Todd and his daughter Winifred were fined £10 each for allowing this out-of-hours booze-up.

CALL UP FOR CAPTAIN: William Rutherford, then captain of Tynedale's rugby team, took part in trials for the England side. This was only the second time in the local club's history that a member of its senior 15 had been invited to take part in international trials.

FLORAL FORECAST: At that year's revived Hexham Horticultural Society chrysanthemum and industrial show, Mrs J.A. Blackett-Ord, the Whitfield gardener that opened the show, made the bizarre prediction that in future atomic energy would be employed to speed up the propagation of chrysanthemums.

100 YEARS AGO

FALSTONE FUND-RAISER: A dance held at Falstone's rectory raised the grand total of £1 and 12 shillings for the St Dunstan's Fund charity. A whist drive at Langley proved more successful, bringing in £17 for the same cause.

TOP COW: Ella of Bywell, an Aberdeen Angus heifer owned by the then Viscount Allendale, won five cups at a leading stock show in Birmingham.

125 YEARS AGO

CLERICAL CONTROVERSY: The appointment of the Rev. J.W. Kempe, an advocate of extreme ritualist doctrine and member of the Secret Society of the Holy Cross, as vicar of Kirkhaugh, near Alston, sparked an outcry among churchgoers there. Almost all his new flock were reported to be indignant at this appointment and anxious that the controversial cleric be transferred elsewhere.

SPORTING COMEBACK: A new cricket club was founded in Haydon Bridge three years after its predecessor folded due to lack of interest.