From our archives:

85 years ago

York was celebrating a week of Yorkshire Choral Competitions at the De Grey Rooms and Exhibition Buildings.

The competitive spirit was running high amongst both choirs and individual vocalists as they prepared to take on contestants from both local and open auditions since it was introduced by Miss Mary Egerton in 1900.

For those looking for some retail therapy John Gray & Sons in Coney Street, York, had placed an advertisement to promote their annual sale of grand and upright pianos.

New pianos were 27 guineas and second-hand pianos from 17 guineas. However, you could request a complete list of the “wonderful bargains to be had”, and any piano could be purchased “on terms to suit your own convenience”.

50 years ago

Fresh trouble had flared up at the £70m Eggborough power station after another 60 men had sacked by their employers during a day-long dispute over bonus agreements.

The sacked 60, all members of the thermal insulation branch of the General and Municipal Workers Union, angrily denounced their union for “selling us up the river”.

Suffolk Shore, a new oil rig supply vessel built to service drilling platforms in the North Sea, was launched at the Selby shipyard of Cochrane and Sons Ltd.

The vessel was the last in a programme of four built at Selby for Off-shore Marine Ltd.

To mark their 200th anniversary, Joseph Terry and Sons, had re-opened their sweet shop in York’s famous Castle Museum, to once again sell their specially produced conversation lozenges, compressed sugar pieces, popular many years ago.

20 years ago

An ambitious bid for cash from the Millennium Commission to help build a £12 million visitor attraction in the heart of York had collapsed.

The National Biblical Heritage Centre, earmarked for the banks of the Ouse, was given the personal backing of the Archbishop of York Dr David Hope.

It had been originally billed by promoters as a high-tech, interactive religious centre which would attract hundreds of thousands of visitors to the city every year.

Shopkeepers David and Christine Jagger closed the doors on a 100-year trading tradition within York’s city walls.

The couple had locked up their corner shop in Bishophill for the last time, leaving residents without a local general provisions store for the first time in a century.