100 years ago

Two years before, through the interest of Earl Feversham and Viscount and Lady Helmsley, an attempt had been made to revive weaving in Helmsley in an old cottage on the way to Rievaulx, known as “The Shuttle.”

Several of the young girls had learned, and orders for all sorts of materials from the old-fashioned rag carpet to fine silk gauze had been carried out. This year an exhibit had been sent by the North Riding Arts and Crafts to the Home Arts Exhibition in London at the Albert Hall, where Queen Alexandra had showed her interest by purchasing a specimen casement curtain (green with red borders) woven by Olive Johnson, who had been working for more than a year.

 

50 years ago

The latest gift to York Castle Museum was only 28 years old. But it illustrated perfectly the life cycle of the horned gramophone from its wax cylinder origins.

It was an EMG handmade acoustic gramophone, built in 1936, and given to the Museum by Mrs Margaret Blyth, of Ormesby, Middlesbrough. This electric, fibre-needled forerunner of hi-fi had a papier mache horn measuring 23ins across the bell and was of a type much prized by purists. It was designed to play only 78 rpm records, so it was no longer of any interest commercially, but, said its former owner,

“it is still perfectly playable and indeed its reproduction can put many modern machines to shame. It represents a certain development in the reproduction of recorded music, the maker (HB Davey, director of EMG) having realised the value of the open or external horn which was first pioneered decades before.”

 

25 years ago

Hundreds of fish were dying in the River Foss in York because of sewage overflows. Clumps of dead fish floating on the polluted water had sickened passers-by. Continuing dry and hot weather was expected to make the situation worse, although the rivers authority was trying to top up water levels.

The disaster came at the end of York Natural Environment Week, which aimed to highlight green issues in the area. Now North Yorkshire county councillor Rupert Ormond, who had been monitoring pollution in the Foss, called for the river to be managed “as a public amenity, not as a sewage outfall and storm drain overflow.”

This week’s fish deaths were brought on by a lethal combination of lowered water levels after vandals opened lock gates, hot weather which had dried up the water flow, and a release of raw sewage into the river following a recent thunderstorm. Sewage pumping stations upstream were without electricity after lightning struck, and sewage was left to flow into the river without treatment.