Way we were

100 years ago: The most remarkable epitaph, according to a columnist, to be found in any English churchyard was, perhaps, that inscribed on a tombstone at Ripon to the memory of one John Brown, who in his day and generation did duty as clerk and sexton. His obituary notice on the headstone read: "Old John Brown is dead and gone, He never died before; He used to wear an old topcoat, That buttoned down before. He used to clean the old church out, He used to toll the bell, He used to dig the poor man's grave, And send his soul to ____."

50 years ago: Coffee houses, places usually associated with places of literary giants like Dr Johnson and James Boswell, had long since fallen out of favour, public houses and restaurants becoming the English man's meeting place. The wheel of fashion always turns full circle, and they were now all the rage again for impecunious art students, sightseers with an hour or two to kill, gossips with reputations to ruin, conversationalists with world problems to solve, meet to talk and drink. The new craze was so far confined to London, but one reason why they were thought to be making a comeback was that the new methods of making coffee, had evolved which made the jokes about English coffee a thing of the past. One York store was already taking a step in the right direction, as it was selling new coffee-making machines, although they were only of household size at the moment. Mr Nobody was quite intrigued at the idea of the coffee house making a comeback, and asked a librarian from York Public Library about the history of these establishments in York. He told the columnist that in their heyday they were the haunts of men only, and were often run by retired butlers, minor officials and the like. In Georgian times there were about 70 in the city, most of these being around York Minster, in the Liberty of St Peter.

25 years ago: Bomb disposal experts travelled to Scarborough to explode a First World War mine hauled in by a fishing boat. The keelboat Success made the catch just north of the resort, and it was towed to a position a mile off Castle Head and left there with a marker buoy, where it stayed until the experts arrived from Portsmouth to blow it up.

Updated: 12:26 Monday, November 29, 2004