A Quick Reminder: Looking back through the archives of The Keswick Reminder from around this week 20, 30, 40 and 50 years ago.
20 years ago
Junior football – Under 16s
The victorious Keswick under 16s football team were photographed after their 5-3 extra time win over local rivals Penrith in the Kent Valley/Furness Cup final at Burneside F.C.
The result provided a fitting end to what has been a magnificent effort by all seventeen regular squad members during a very competitive season in which Keswick also reached the final of the Westmorland County FA. Minor Cup.
In all, Keswick played 38 games, winning 21, drawing 5 and losing 12. They scored 139 goals and conceded 86.
The unavailability of players hampered their league programme, during which they won 12 and drew 5 of their 26 fixtures in an extremely tough division.
They finished ninth out of 14 teams after a slow start to the season, although a run of seven wins and just two defeats in their last 12 league games put them within a single victory of sixth place.
But it was in the Cup competitions that Keswick excelled, winning 9 of their 12 ties. It culminated in last week’s thrilling Cup final victory which saw them trail three times before scoring twice in extra time to lift the trophy thanks to goals from Duncan Lawrence (3), Paul Hindmarch (penalty) and Richard Kirk.
Lawrence was top scorer for the season with 41 goals. Kirk was second with 26, while Tom Kufuor and Joe Gibson also reached double figures with 20 and 14 respectively.
‘Clean’ power for school building
Keswick School’s new science laboratory will be powered with innovative technology, the first of its kind anywhere in the world.
The half million pound technology and science project at the school – to be known as the Crosthwaite Centre – will be able to provide all its own electricity power by the way of innovative photo voltaic cells in the roof, which is attracting European interest. £60,000 of the total cost of the project was raised locally.
New Mayor elected
Councillor Elizabeth Barraclough is Keswick’s newly elected Mayor and took over the chain of office from outgoing Mayor Sue Conlon at the Town Council’s annual meeting on Thursday evening.
This is Miss Barraclough’s second term of office as Mayor, her first was in 1997-1998, and she has promised to try to resolve a number of controversial issues in the town, including the long-running saga over Keswick Football club’s move Walker Park and the future development of the foreshore and tea garden site.
30 years ago
Helvellyn footpath project
Next Wednesday a major partnership initiative to repair severely eroded areas of Helvellyn will begin. Spear-headed by the National Park Authority and North West Water, the scheme will be helped by the Army Air Corps from RAF Shawbury in Shropshire.
Helvellyn is one of the most walked mountains in the Lake District and the project will also involve Community Action, BTCV, the Youth Hostels Association and local feed firms AF Feeds and BOCM Pauls. It is anticipated that the project will run until the end of September.
Taking place on land owned by North West Water, the scheme involves the construction of a path through severely eroded areas of fellside at Brown Cove Crags and Comb Gill with landscape restoration work to areas either side of the path.
40 years ago
Keswickians in Normandy landings anniversary
A group of Keswick’s “local heroes” will this weekend be travelling to France for the memory-jerking 40th anniversary of the “D” Day landings on the beaches of Normandy.
For many this is the first time they have revisited the dramatic battle scenes which marked the allied forces’ invasion of Europe. Some are travelling in organised parties of Normandy “ veterans.” Others are making their way privately to France to meet up with wartime comrades and go back once more to locations which hold such lasting-memories, some pleasant, some sad.
Mr. Dick Fisher of Applethwaite is one of fifty-three members of the recently established Normandy Veterans’ Society who are leaving from Grange-over-Sands this weekend by coach. There are about one hundred members of the Association, most of them former Border regiment men drawn from Appleby, Penrith, Carlisle and West Cumbria.
It is Mr. Fisher’s first return trip to the French beaches since he was part of the first wave of troops on “D” Day, 6th June, 1944. “I have had mixed feelings about going back,” he said. “I have some happy memories, but also some very drastic ones. It is one day which is firmly etched in my mind. In such a situation your values are totally different.”
Mr. Fisher was with the 940 Squadron of the Royal Engineers, a company which had links with the Lake District before he joined as they patrolled Derwentwater and some of the other lakes in armed motor boats to prevent seaplanes landing.
Mr. Fisher recalls that the first inkling he had that his regiment was bound for the French coast was when soldiers were told to pack up their surplus kit and send it home, along with personal photographs, etc. “My mother got quite a shock when my personal gear arrived back,” he said, “It was at this stage, about two weeks before, that I realised there was something going on.”
Mr. Fisher’s regiment were kept in a compound on the Isle of Wight the night before setting sail. Just before they set off they were each given a cup of cocoa and a special document signed by General Eisenhower under the heading of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force.
He and his party set sail at 6-00 p.m. the previous evening and landed at 6-45 p.m. on “D” Day. His regiment were on the first boats to land on Sword beach and he remembers working that beach under cover of dense smoke.
Mr. Fisher was in the beach area for about six weeks, but unfortunately went into a field hospital near Bayeux and lost his unit. He finished up going right across Europe with another unit ending up in Hamburg.
One evening in a French village, he remembers coming across some familiar figures from home in the Border regiment when he met up with Bob Welsh and Fred Aston.
Mr. Fisher and his fellow veterans will be setting off on Monday, and he is heading for a small village near Bayeux near the beaches where various functions have been arranged for the remainder of the week. They will be on parade at Arromanches although he confessed: “It’s a long time since I marched and I might be a bit rusty.”
Mr. Bob Welsh, who Dick met up with during the French campaign forty years ago will be going to France for a day visit while Mr. Fisher’s party will be picking up a former Keswick man Mr. Bob Cowgill, now of Kent, on their way south.
Another well known Keswickian who is making a private visit and for whom the trip is bound to evoke special memories, is Mr. Barry Hodgson, Portinscale, one of the principals in a local building firm.
Mr. Hodgson will witness the commemoration of a plaque to members of his own 13th Parachute Regiment in the war graves area and also a memorial to Canadian members of the unit.
Mr. Hodgson, who won the Military Cross for his part in the invasion, was dropped in behind enemy lines before daylight. His battalion liberated the first village.
He said: “I am going with my old regiment. It will be the first time I have been back since the war.”
Other people from Keswick and district with particular memories of “D” Day and the time just after include Mr. William “Bunty” Airey of Threlkeld, who served with the Gloucester Infantry Regiment and was wounded on Hill 112.
Mr. Harold Bestley of Rosthwaite will be travelling to Normandy in company with his wife this Sunday. He was a Major in the 9th Parachute regiment whose objective was the Merville battery. They were dropped in before the seaborne forces and he was wounded.
Wanted – a football field
Thirteen members of Bassenthwaite Football Club have written to their Parish Council asking if the Council can help them obtain the use of a full size football pitch.
Signing themselves “Lads from the Village” they point out that, although there are goal posts on the village green, there are problems with the ball going into neighbouring gardens, hitting parked cars, and even moving cars!
At present Bassenthwaite Football team has to play all its matches as “away” games and a pitch of their own would be more than welcome. “We would like to be able to ask teams to come to Bassenthwaite to play,” they write.
50 years ago
Letter to the Editor
Dear Sir, – As one of the less illustrious ‘Old Boys’ of Crosthwaite (Senior) School, and one that the then teaching fraternity could well have done without, I still find it sad to read of the closure, which is proposed for the near future, of this establishment, and I have a fear that this ancient institution will fall into the hands of some money hungry developer as seems to be the fate of quite a number of such buildings in our country today.
It will no doubt be the subject of much deliberation, as to what is to become of the school building, and I would request that the powers that be use, during such deliberations, a little more heart than head, so as to assure that the building remains intact in its present form.
I long ago learned that sentiment is a costly hobby, but one often comes across the exception, and I believe this to be just such an exception, and little doubt exists in my mind, that some method can be found whereby financial sustenance can be provided by the building itself. Not probably the best of ideas, but, a combined church/school museum with a tourist information centre for the Keswick area?
Yours sincerely,
G. Briggs
Workington
Boundary Walk
A novel event in the life of the parish of Bassenthwaite is due to take place tomorrow when the parishioners are likely to be joined by a large crowd of interested people from outside the parish to take part in a boundary walk — and the boundary of Bassenthwaite goes through the summit of Skiddaw and down the middle of the lake!
Boundary walks were a regular feature of life at one time when one parish was not beyond “acquiring” a few fields from the neighbouring parish and though that is no longer necessary, of course, many parishes keep up this ancient custom.
Not many have the same problems, however, as Bassenthwaite on its 23-mile perimeter, which is perhaps why the boundaries have not been “walked” for forty-six years. One of the walkers on that occasion was Mr. Maurice Thompson, Walnut House, Bassenthwaite – ‘nobbut a lad” at the time – and he suggested the proposed walk at the annual parish meeting.
Saturday’s event has been split into three stages – Ouse Bridge to Park Wood, Park Wood to Dash Falls, and Dash Falls via Skiddaw summit back to St. Bega’s Church – all of which will begin at 10-30 a.m. They have been described in a very interesting brochure compiled by Mr. David Hotton, Bassenfell, which makes it clear that no one is expected to perform miracles in “ walking” the stage through Bassenthwaite Lake. In fact members of the Bassenthwaite Lake Sailing Club are to provide a flotilla from Ouse Bridge to St. Bega’s, while younger members of the parish will swim the boundary in relays.
