THIS WEEK IN 1961:

QUEEN Elizabeth, the Queen Mother is to visit Worcester on June 23. Her purpose – to see the new £22,000 science block extensions to the Royal Grammar School which this year celebrates the 400th anniversary of the granting of its free school charter by Queen Elizabeth I. This will be the Queen Mother’s second visit to the school. In 1922, she accompanied the late King George VI, then the Duke of York, when he opened the science buildings.

􀁥 The Home Office has refused the city council’s request to demolish three Second World War air raid shelters at Gorse Hill Primary School. They have long been a headache to the council which has several times wired up the entrances to stop children and others getting in. Now, at a cost of £35, the entrances are to be bricked up.

THIS WEEK IN 1971:

A MOVE to install 21 colour television sets at Powick Hospital has been deferred for a year by the South Worcestershire Hospital management committee. Dr WG Astley said the committee could face public criticism by spending on the luxury of colour TVs when money was needed for more urgent medical facilities. But Alderman Mrs Hilda Lettice said the black and white TV sets at Powick were out of date and film shows at the hospital were not being supported by the patients. If colour TVs were provided in place of the “old sets” and the film shows, there would be a saving of £527 a year.

She said: “There are many patients at Powick Hospital who are likely to spend the rest of their lives there and it would bring a little cheer to them if colour television was installed.” But Dr Astley warned that such a move could result in every other hospital demanding colour TVs.

THIS WEEK IN 1981:

FROM the Crowquill column of Berrow’s Worcester Journal: “A marked change in the eating habits of the Worcester population can be seen in the rise of the quick snack industry. By that I mean the sandwiches, hot pies and soup which are dispensed largely by bakers and confectioners. The reason is obvious.

Restaurant meals have become so dear that the average wage-earner just cannot afford to have a sitdown lunch every day. So he or she joins the queue at the snacks counter and comes away clutching a pre-packed triple egg and cress in brown bread and a cardboard tub of tomato soup. But where are these snacks eaten? I suppose most of the snack customers go back to their offices and slurp their soup in a quiet corner, though in the summer a lot tend to congregate in the sunshine by the Glover’s Needle, surrounded by a constant swarm of sparrows waiting for their share of the cheap lunches.”

THIS WEEK IN 1991:

FOR the first time in years, the county highways department has had to buy in more stocks of rock salt to cope with the continued below zero temperatures.

With the lengthy cold snap looking set to continue for another week, the county highways team has already used up more than 25,000 tonnes of rock salt to spread on major and minor roads by 55 gritting vehicles. At the beginning of the winter, the county had 36,000 tons of rock salt, but with stocks fast diminishing, more supplies are being urgently shipped in at a cost of £20.