Do You Remember When?

1908

IN THE majority of the shops in Bexhill, Boxing Day, as well as Christmas Day, will be observed as a holiday. The bakers have also issued a notice that bread will not be baked after Thursday, December 24th, until Monday, December 28th. Most grocers, provision merchants, stationers, confectioners, drapers, ironmongers and furnishers have decided to close their establishments on the Saturday, while the majority of butchers, poulterers and fishmongers will open till midday.

SPECIAL arrangements have been made by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway Company to cope with the extra traffic this Christmastide. On Christmas Eve five-day excursion tickets will be issued by the 7.40p.m. train to London, available to return on any train, on any day up to an including Monday, December 28. A late train will leave Bexhill at 11.34p.m. on Christmas Eve for Victoria while a similar train will leave Victoria at 12 with arrival at Bexhill at 4.13 on Christmas Morning.

1958

HOW to provide satisfactory physical training for its pupils '“ that has long been a major problem confronting Harewood Preparatory School for Boys. If the weather was fine the boys were exercised out of doors; if wet, it was necessary to compromise with "physical jerks" in one of the larger rooms. Now, however, the problem no longer exists, for the school possesses a fine, new and well-equipped gymnasium, officially opened on Monday.

SIR, As a relative newcomer to Bexhill, may I take this opportunity to congratulate the "Observer" in general and the editorial staff in particular on their excellence in presenting local news and for writing such leading articles without fear or favour - Letter to Editor.

1968

ASSURANCES that no decision had yet been taken over the proposed merger of the Bexhill Grammar Schools were given at a meeting at the Boys' School which was attended by parents of pupils at primary schools in the Bexhill catchment area.

A 61-YEAR-OLD woman who claimed she was working for M.I.5 when arrested for shoplifting was fined 5 by Bexhill Magistrates' Court on Friday last week. She was also ordered to pay five guineas for damage caused to a police cell. She pleaded not guilty to stealing a tin of ravioli, a tube of mustard and two bars of chocolate to a total value of 4s. 2d. (21p) from the International Tea Company.

1978

PEACE on earth. Goodwill to all men '“ except those who decree that their fellow men shall live on the edge of some fly-blown rubbish dump. There is an unseasonal air of shallow expediency about the county planning committee's headlong dash to seek permission to create an official site for 12 gipsy caravans by that choice residential area the Pebsham tip. - Editorial.

PUPILS of Bexhill High School entertained 20 people brought along by the Caring Community at a Christmas tea last Wednesday. Home economics students did the cooking, the girls' choir staged an entertainment and each guest went home with a Christmas stocking which had been made by first-year boys.

1988

A NEW community centre and 20 warden care flats can be built in the Old Town by St Peter's Church. The application for the replacement of the existing centre and the demolition of two houses in Orchard Close was agreed by Rother planning committee on Thursday.

1998

SPONSORSHIP for the Bexhill 100 Festival of Motoring was signed up for the Millennium and beyond last week when insurance giants Hastings Direct and the 100 board put their agreement on paper. Young people from Bexhill's two secondary schools were also there to launch the Young Engineers Club's Serpollet racing car project. The aim is to create a full-scale working replica of the car in which M. Leon Serpollet '“ "the eminent French steam automobilist" as the Observer described him at the time, won the 1902 Bexhill Motor Trials.

COUNCIL staff have been handed an early Christmas present of a six and a half per cent pay rise '“ four per cent above inflation.

The decision to grant an extra three per cent rise across the board, backdated to September 1, on top of three and a half per cent already received was greeted with a round of applause from a packed public gallery at a full council meeting on Wednesday night.