March 28, 1956

Villagers in Claypole are talking about the prompt and brave action of 13-year-old Olive Cook, who saved a girl from drowning.

Judy Talbot, not yet two-years-old, was walking along the bank of the River Witham when she slipped and fell into the water. Her head was just showing above the water when Olive jumped into the river and caught her.

With the child in her arms, Olive scrambled back on to the bank and took Judy home.

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With the long-mooted plans for a Newark bypass still undecided, it is likely that the proposal for a bridge carrying the Great North Road from Trent Bridge over the railway will be abandoned.

It is now probable that a new bridge will carry the road from Lombard Street over the Trent behind the cattle market and over the railway.

First indications of the changed plan were given by Mr D. P. Blatherwick, chairman of the cattle market committee, when he replied at a Newark Town Council meeting to comments made by the Newark branch of the National Farmers’ Union about the committee’s proposals for market improvements.

He said that when plans were prepared for a new pig market, it was known that there were proposals for a bridge over the railway which would take part of the present market site.
 

March 21, 1956

At this year’s Southwell YFC Barn Dance there was a competition to find Mr Handsome Harvester in which about five volunteers and 15 pressed men took part.

The judges — Miss R. Sansome (Miss Young Farmer 1956) Miss A. H. Wathall (YFC county organiser) and Mr P. Lyth (principal of Brackenhurst) — chose Philip Glassford and crowned him with a Davy Crockett cap.

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So many couples want to adopt babies through the Southwell Diocesan Association for Moral Welfare that the association can no longer meet in a year more than two-thirds of the applications.

When the association was registered as an adoption society five years ago, only half-a-dozen babies were placed in a year.

Now 20 are being placed every year, and applications are being received at the rate of 50 or more a year.

These babies are all born to unmarried mothers at the association’s home, St Catherine’s House, Wilson Street, Newark.

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A recent announcement that a new Barnby Road junior school is to be built was followed up by the announcement that there may also be a new Barnby Road infants’ school built on the same Newark site.

A meeting of Newark District Education Committee heard that the major building programme for 1957-8 provides for the conversion of Barnby Road county mixed school to a secondary modern school; further extensions to Hawtonville junior school; the new Barnby Road infants’ school, and conversion of the Magnus and Lilley and Stone schools to grammar-technical schools.
 

March 14, 1956

To families at Dachau — once among the most notorious of Nazi concentration camps, now the home of thousands of displaced persons — parcels of food and clothing will flow from Newark in a steady stream.

Each parcel, weighing between five and 20lbs, will go to a displaced family — a different one each time. It is planned to send a parcel every week.

The scheme for direct aid from Newark to the camp was unanimously approved by Newark Rotary Club on Monday.

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The Newark Sea Cadet Corps, which has given up its leaking torpedo boat to the ship-breakers, has the distinction of being among the best 100 pre-Service units in the Empire.

Much water has passed by the Newark unit during the past 13 years and many honours have been nailed to the mast.

It has just been awarded its third burgee for efficiency and burgees follow the award of successive efficiency pennants.

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Newark will help to provide a motive power for the main line expresses that pass through Newark under the revolutionary new electrification scheme announced by British Railways.

The new schemes provides for locomotives to draw current more or less direct from the national grid, to which Staythorpe Power Station is one of the main contributors.

One of the three priority routes for main line electrification is that from King’s Cross through Newark and Doncaster to Leeds.
 

March 7, 1956

On an educational visit to London, boys of Sconce Hills School, Newark, visited Westminster to brush up on their parliamentary history.

They are seen on the terrace with Mr George Deer, Newark’s MP, who was the boys’ guide and lecturer on an extensive tour of both houses of Parliament.

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Fewer boys leaving school in Newark and district last year chose agriculture for their first jobs — but the proportion was still the highest in Nottinghamshire.

Of all who left local schools between October 1, 1954, and September 30, 1955, about one in four chose agriculture and horticulture. The Newark and district figure was 23.7% compared with the previous year’s 25.8% and with a figure for the country as a whole of 7.7%.

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Mr R. M. Rose, of Bottom Farm, Laxton, watched a Vampire jet “literally fall out of the sky rolling from end to end,” on Monday morning.

The aircraft crashed in a wood at Kneesall. The two occupants had already baled out.

Squadron Leader Povey landed in a field at Knapthorpe Farm, Canton. Flight Lieutenant C. P. Francis landed at common Farm, Caunton. The aircraft was on a routine instructor flight from Cranwell RAF Station.

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The new president of Newark Trademen’s Association is Miss Marjorie Smithson, a ladies’ hairdresser. She is the association’s second woman president.