GUARDIANS at Droitwich Spa's workhouse were advertising for a labour mistress. The salary was £20 per year with board, lodgings and washing thrown in. An extra allowance of £2.10s (£2.50p) per annum was on offer in lieu of a beer ration.

100 years ago

May 6, 1899

GUARDIANS at Droitwich Spa's workhouse were advertising for a labour mistress. The salary was £20 per year with board, lodgings and washing thrown in. An extra allowance of £2.10s (£2.50p) per annum was on offer in lieu of a beer ration.

EXCITING plans were in the pipeline to connect Bromsgrove town with the rail station a mile away by a tram or light railway system. Another scheme would see a connection run from the bottom of Rock Hill to the Lickeys.

THE vexed question of allowing worshippers at St John's Church, Bromsgrove, to sit anywhere was the subject of an adjourned Easter vestry meeting this week. It was generally agreed the antiquated system, whereby people had a right to sit in certain pews, should be allowed to die out and no new allocations made.

THE Rev Llewellyn Jones, one time curate at St John's Church, in Bromsgrove, now Bishop of Newfoundland, had just heard his diocese now included the North Pole.

BARNT Green was about to come into the 20th century. Telephone lines were being laid in the village enabling residents to talk to other subscribers in Birmingham and elsewhere.

HABITUAL drunk William Bateman, a shoemaker of The Vines, Droitwich, was hauled before Spa magistrates charged with being drunk and disorderly in Ricketts Lane. At a loss to know what to do with him, magistrates adjourned the case for six months to see if his behaviour improved.

50 years ago

May 7, 1949

PLANS were being made to resurrect Lickey Horticultural Society. The show, which had last been held before the war, was one of the town's outstanding events.

TARDEBIGGE residents gathered at the village school to pay tribute to Mrs Hugh Dixon. She was retiring from representing the area on the parish and rural district councils -- posts she had held since 1913.

BROMSGROVE was preparing to go to the polls this week. A feature of this year's event was that eight women were standing for district and parish council elections.

VANDALS cut the blooms from a bed of tulips in the recently laid out gardens surrounding the Council House, in Crown Close, Bromsgrove. In its editorial, the Messenger said a taste of the birch would not be out of place for the perpetrator.

THE Cedars in New Road, Bromsgrove, a property in Handsworth, one in Lydiate Ash and a cider Mill, in Malvern, were sold for £17,135 by town estate agents A Victor Powell.

25 years ago

May 3, 1974

BROMSGROVE'S new telephone excha-nge, in Hanover Street, would open later this month. It would replace Bromsgrove's first exchange, in Recreation Road, which dated from 1938.

EXCAVATIONS in Bromsgrove's Mill Lane, on the site of recently demolished buildings, unearthed a large rusty petrol tank. A spokesman for developer William Weaver said it was a mystery how it had got there.

THE Forelands Hospital, in Bromsgrove, staged an open day. Visitors to the gaily decorated hospital, off Worcester Road, saw an exhibition of old photographs and examples of patients' work.

THREE Bromsgrove nurses were in the final of the Heart of England Nurse Contest '74, being held in Bridgnorth. They were Katie Lane, Jessie Garner and Dawn Rafferty, a sister at the general hospital.