Thursday, January 26, 2006

100 years ago

A meeting of the Ouse and Foss Navigation Committee of the York Corporation was held where the terms of the agreement with Messrs Leetham were again brought before them. Under the agreement arrived at in 1888 Messrs Leetham had paid £600 a year for their traffic on the Ouse, and £200 for the Foss. Messrs Leetham wished to buy land from the Corporation to extend their premises at the same rate as before, and asked for the right of mechanical traction across Foss Islands Road. They had now agreed to pay an additional £275 a year for the Foss and to erect an electrical pump at Castle Mills Lock (instead of the existing steam pump) to keep that river up to a proper level.

50 years ago

By virtue of its situation as a national route centre giving her a general accessibility, York had a potential trade of considerable size in the housing of conferences, conventions and the like. She also possessed a tourist industry of no mean size. However, during investigations for a regional study of the city by a university degree student, an extraordinary situation had been brought home. York possessed only nine hotels capable of holding over 20 persons - many of these would have had to share double rooms. These nine hotels possessed a total capacity for only 358 people. Two hotels had capacity greater than 36. It was ironic that the city asked visitors to patronise a first rate triennial festival and forced all but the first 358 (many of whom might be foreigners) to 'dig' in third rate comfort alongside our families. However pleasant and nice the citizens might have been, tourists did like some luxuries on holiday.

25 years ago

York was described by the secretary-general of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament as a centre of vigorous CND activity. Mr Bruce Kent was speaking at Vanbrugh College to York students' CND group. He accused the academic community of being "almost as silent as the Church" about the dangers of a nuclear holocaust. "As members of York University," he told his audience of 130, "you must find out what sort of arms research is being carried out. You must make civil defence an issue in the local elections in May by asking candidates what they are going to do about it. The young must show the older generation that war was no longer a matter of fighting in Spitfires." Turning to what he called "the ridiculous state of civil defence," Mr Kent remarked: "I would love to know how the men in Easingwold hope to control the situation after the calamity." Easingwold was the location of the Home Defence College.

Updated: 16:04 Wednesday, January 25, 2006