By Saul Cooke-Black

SNJ reporter Saul Cooke-Black delves into the archives.

1965

CONCERNS were raised about the quality and safety of drinking water in Stonehouse.

A parish council meeting heard that two samples of water submitted for bacteriological had been declared fit while one which had been chemically analysed was found unfit for consumption.

Further complaints of discoloured water were also reported.

AMBITIOUS plans were launched to restore Stroud Parish Church.

Father John revealed details of a £20,000 programme to prevent the building from further decay, which included replacing some of the stained glass windows and moving the organ and choir.

The church was looking to raise £2,000 to prevent further immediate decay.

TELEVISION fans across Stroud were eagerly awaiting the launch of BBC 2.

TV shop Clarke Bros. were advertising their latest television receivers in anticipation of the new channel.

1975

COMMUTERS were facing a rise in bus fares.

Adult single fares of 22p and 25p were increased by two pence while fares of 28p were increased by three pence.

Day out tickets remained unchanged at £1 for adults and 65p for children.

AMERICAN girl scouts staying in Stroud presented the council chairman and his wife with a commemorative coin from the Mayor of Lewiston, Niagara.

The ten girls and their two leaders, all from the Niagara Falls area, presented the sesquicentennial coin at a reception in Brimscombe.

The coin was struck to mark 150 years of historical significance on the Niagara frontier.

1985

A SPECIAL cricket match was organised to mark a Selsley and Rodborough player’s 50th playing season in the sport.

Doug Wager first started playing in 1935, joining the Rodborough Tabernacle Cricket Club the following year until it folded at the beginning of the war.

After the war he rejoined the Rodborough club and played for the side ever since, scoring around 20,000 runs for the side through the years.

A KING’S STANLEY man helped rescue Simon Le Bon and 23 other people after the yacht of the Duran Duran star capsized.

Mike Palmer was navigator and winchman aboard the Navy helicopter that rushed to the rescue after 15 foot waves ripped off the keel of the yacht.

Pop star Simon Le Bon was taking part in the Fastnet yacht race, near Falmouth, when the incident happened.

1995

A TOWN crier from Nailsworth was selected to take part in a special VJ Day parade in London in front of the Queen.

Tony Evans was one of only nine criers who would march in an arrow head formation with the Queen’s town crier from Constitution Hill to Buckingham Palace.

The Queen would take the salute as the town criers marched past.

A NEW £600,000 pipe was connected to homes in three villages whose water supplies had run dry twice in a month.

Homes in Hardwicke, Quedgeley and Whaddon would benefit from the two-and-a-half mile-long underground mains pipe which pumped water direct from a reservoir.

A YOUNG man who spent four nights on Dartmoor when the army were airlifted off because the weather was so bad was rewarded at a garden party at Buckingham Palace.

Simon Diplock, from Frampton Mansell was awarded his Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award by solo round the world yachtsman Sir Robert Knox Johnson.

2005

FORMER SNJ arts editor Adam Horowitz made it to the semi-finals of a national weight loss competition after losing more than seven stone in a year.

The poet slimmed down from 22st 2lbs to just 14st 9.5lbs with the help of the town’s Slimming World Group.

Adam went to the finals of Slimming World’s Man of the Year Competition in Derbyshire and picked up his award from Debra Stephenson, who played Frankie Baldwin in Coronation Street.

AWARD-WINNING Nailsworth bakery Hobb’s House starred in a BBC TV programme on how to make ‘dough.’ The top bakery featured in BBC 1’S Mind Your Own Business.