March 28, 1952

The Octopus, the St Leonard's Church club for the whole family, met in Newark on Friday night - and it was a meeting with a difference. The men worked and the women relaxed.

Sons and husbands donned aprons and waited on mothers and wives at the supper table.

After the meal they rolled up their sleeves and washed the dishes. The children performed a play called The Prodigal Sons and there was community singing.

The vicar, the Rev Bernard Hill, is not using the Octopus as an obscure lever to get bigger congregations. He and his wife are making dozens of families feel they are welcome in their parish church.

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Secondary education in Newark will break down within a year unless additions to Sconce Hills Secondary Modern are completed, Newark and District Education Committee have warned the Ministry of Education.

The committee also warned about the ministry's proposal to stop the erection of a primary school on the Winthorpe Road estate.

A letter of protest on these two points, sent to the ministry through the director of education for Nottinghamshire, was approved at Thursday's meeting.

The committee had been told of the disappearance of the plans for the Winthorpe Road Primary School from the Ministry's building programmes for 1951-52 and 1952-53, and the decision to stop work on addition to the Sconce Hills School.

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The Lilley and Stone High School, Newark, will not be quite the same after July. Miss Siebel is retiring.

She has been PT mistress at the school for 32 years. She has been a shining example to the hundreds of girls that there is no reason why a woman should not look absolutely immaculate 24 hours a day seven days a week.

She can spend an afternoon on the hockey pitch in the blustery weather, and still not a hair is out of place on her neatly cropped head.

March 19, 1952

At the beginning of the present season there was controversy when Balderton Old Boys FC decided to confine their attentions to local football.

Wise or not Balderton found the District League sufficiently difficult at the beginning of the season but now their luck seems to have turned again.

They have reached the semi-final of the Hospital Cup and in recent weeks have considerably improved their league position. P. Parker, Ken Digby, C. Kemp and T.

Leader have graduated from the A team and with Jack Coulby, Phil Lale, Ron Chaplin and Colin Huckerby have formed a reasonably powerful combination.

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A team of three children from the Mount Senior School, Newark -Julia Dalby, John Alexander and Colin Reece -has won the Lane Cup in a beekeeping competition open to all schools in Nottinghamshire.

Julia Dalby accepted the cup on behalf of the team at the annual meeting of the Notts Beekeepers' Association at Nottingham on Sunday.

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A Varsity training plane from Swinderby RAF station missed a house at Eagle by feet as it crash-landed in a field on Monday afternoon, said an eye-witness.

The crew of three escaped uninjured. Mr George Buxton, a railwayman, saw the aircraft circle Eagle with smoke pouring from one engine. The other cut out as the plane glided over a house at Eagle level crossing.

"It missed the house by feet and only just missed the telegraph wires,"said Mr Buxton.

March 12, 1950

Sunday was a proud day for Newark's ex-Grenadier Guardsmen. At a special afternoon service in the Parish Church, the new colour of the First or Grenadier Guards' Comrades' Association (Newark branch) was dedicated.

The Vicar of Newark (Canon G. W. Clarkson), himself an ex-Grenadier, conducted the service. The new standard was carried by Mr G. H. Price, D. S. M., who served with the Grenadier Guards from 1907 until 1912.

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Newark's Labour MP, Mr George Deer, on Friday advised Newark engineering union shop stewards not to take strike action on political issues.

He was presented with a petition signed by 500 employees of Ransome and Marles Bearing Co, Ltd, expressing concern at the rising cost of living and their fears that the position might be worsened by the Government's budget proposals.

It was at the invitation of the shop stewards that Mr Deer met them in the Labour rooms, Newark, on Friday.

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Beaumond Olde Tyme Dance Club held their first annual dinner and dance in the Sherwood Suite of the Robin Hood Hotel on Thursday night.

The guests were Superintendent and Mrs R. Youngs and Mrs J. Payne, wife of the manager of the Robin Hood. Mrs S. Dilkes presided.

The toast was proposed by Mr H. Bland. When the club was formed in October there were 60 members. Today there were 150.

March 5, 1952

Nottinghamshire County Library has started a take-the-books-to-the-readers service for villages and isolated farms around Newark.

This specially-built library, stocked with 2,500 books, is making fortnightly calls to most of the villages to the north and north-west of Newark.

Between 200 and 300 books are issued daily from the van, which makes about 24 stops everyday and is based at the Regional Library, Burgage House, Southwell.

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A diver who made an underwater examination of the foundations of Newark Castle has reported there is no immediate danger to the structure.

Newark Town Council were told on Monday that, after the collapse of another Trent-side building the town clerk, Mr J. H. M. Greaves, asked the Ministry of Works for expert advice on the possible effect the river, and works being carried out nearby, might have upon the foundations of the castle.

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Eighteen-years-old-Donald Spafford of Bowbridge Road caught a 3ft long pike in the Balderton Ballast Pit. The fish, which weighed 13lbs was caught with a pike rod and one-inch spinner on a gimp trace. Donald landed it, helped by a friend, in five minutes.

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Work on improving the facilities of Newark Cattle Market will begin on May 1, reported Councillor D. P. Blatherwick chairman of Newark Town Council's cattle market committee.

The work will include the construction of truck washes, drainage sedimentation tanks, conversion of existing buildings, a new sale ring and standings.