100 years ago

The Leeds-Liverpool Canal Company had its half yearly meeting. It was reported that traffic had been favourable in view of the absence of frost and drought. The net income was £26,748 compared to £25,635 in 1897.

The Devonshire Hotel at Grassington, was offered for sale, with an adjoining cottage, yard, stabling and other outbuildings. The auctioneers were John Throup and Son, of Skipton, and there was a large company present including the representatives of several well-known brewing firms and local property owners. The property was withdrawn at £4,000.

Extra grouse shooting took place at Bolton Abbey, on account of the large number of birds left on the Duke of Devonshire's moors.

50 years ago

Proposals for making Skipton's Otley Street and Newmarket Street safer for pedestrian and vehicular traffic were put forward during a Road Safety Conference at Skipton Town Hall. Suggestions included erecting notices at the end of Otley Street warning drivers that the street was narrow, banning parking and making Otley Street one-way for traffic. The one-way proposal was forwarded.

The flooding of the cellars at Ings School, Skipton, was again raised at a meeting of the Skipton Group of Primary School Managers. It was pointed out that the flooding had been going on for a long time, and a pump was the only practical method to resolve it.

A Skipton bus driver was fined 40 shillings, with 18 shillings costs, for quitting a public service vehicle without stopping the engine and setting the brake. The vehicle was said to have run about 10 yards down a hill and collided with a wall. No one in the bus was injured.

25 years ago

SILSDEN Urban District Council had received 54 applications in respect of the 20 nearly-completed old people's dwellings at Brierdene in Bolton Road. Architects had also been asked to design a flatlet scheme of 30 single bedroomed flats which were to be built between the new fire station and Woodside Road.

A foot and mouth outbreak in Turkey caused three Carleton women to become stranded in Greece. Cynthia and Daphne Brown and their aunt Ellen Ayrton had spent the first week of their Wallace Arnold tour in Istanbul and had crossed over for their second week in Greece. In Salomike, the police authorities allowed them to go no further for fear of them spreading the disease. They were detained in the hotel for several days.

An ban on further development in Hellifield was announced until 1976 (three years hence) because of the water shortage crisis. Consumption was well above yield. Until the supply to Airton reservoir had been connected which would serve Hellifield, Airton, Otterburn and Calton, all new housing was halted.

A guitarist from Sutton-in-Craven was given the opportunity to teach the guitar at a Blues festival at Osnabruck, Germany. David Abrams, 23, of The Hawthorns, already taught folk and classical guitar as well as private teaching in Craven.

10 years ago

EAST Marton's Cross Keys Hotel had been transformed, temporarily, into the 'Three Horse Shoes'. Filming had been taking place for a 40 second Webster's Yorkshire Bitter advertisement. The 40-strong film crew was making three adverts in five days at various locations in Yorkshire, one of the others being at Riddlesden. Filming was being done both indoors and outdoors and the Cross Keys had been closed for two days just at the time when all the other public houses were opening all day. It was the sixth commercial to be filmed, the first of the series had been filmed two years earlier in Carleton.

Former Skipton Girls' High School pupil, Helen Riddiough, 18, had proved she was top class. She had won a Queen's Jubilee Scholarship in civil engineering, one of only six people to do so, and was to complete it at Loughborough University. Her twin sister, Rachel, was to go to study modern languages at Sheffield University.

The first ever Ribblehead Sheep Show took place against the famous backdrop of the viaduct which carries the Settle to Carlisle railway. The show had been started following the demise of the sheep sales which used to take place at Ribblehead between 1935 and 1981. Show secretary Kathryn Hartley hoped the event would become a permanent date on the farming calendar.

Rumours were rife that Bentham wallpaper company, Gravure Print, had laid off 17 of its youngest workforce though the firm had refused to speak to the Herald about it. They did work for wallpaper giants Crown and Laura Ashley.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.