THIS WEEK IN 1961:
WORCESTER’S children are taught in schools which challenge comparison with any in England, yet after school leaving age they are left to find their entertainment in public houses, a skating rink or in the brawling atmosphere of Angel Place on a Saturday night. So warned Mrs Sarah Knight, first woman chairman of SAMA (the Society for the Advancement of Music and the Arts in Worcester), speaking at its AGM. She bitterly attacked the city council for not making provision for a civic theatre and a centre for the arts in Worcester and for its failure to include such a cultural centre in the city’s future development. When it came to appeals on behalf of the sick, the old and the handicapped or for hospital and health services and charitable and voluntary efforts, Worcester was among the very first cities of its size to respond. “But care of the body is not all,” she asserted. “People need to be taken out of themselves, to enjoy familiar music and a play with real live people in it, not shadows on a television screen.”

THIS WEEK IN 1971:
ALONG some of Worcestershire’s winding country roads, both the busy and the quiet ones, the roadside farm shop is becoming a common sight – and it seems to be here to stay. The change from the old tin hut-type of stall, with a hastily scrawled price list on a piece of cardboard, to the sophisticated shop with parking space and supplies of fresh produce attractively displayed, has happened quickly. Farmers are not known for speedy adaptation to new methods but those who are trying their hand at direct selling of “the really fresh stuff”

certainly seem to have got the message when it comes to pleasing the customer.

Perhaps we shall see an even stronger move in this direction during the next couple of years.

THIS WEEK IN 1981:
DEACONESS Diana McClatchey said it with flowers outside Worcester Cathedral on Sunday. She and a band of a dozen girl and women supporters staged a passive “floral”

demonstration, handing out roses and other flowers for the buttonholes of the 2,000 people attending the Diocesan Ordination Service. It was Deaconess McClatchey and her friends’ novel way of drawing attention to their cause – the Movement for the Ordination of Women.

Inside the Cathedral, the huge congregation was attending the ordination as priests of eight men. “We rejoice with those men who are being ordained today but wish also to focus people’s thoughts on the pain of those excluded from ordination – women who believe they are called to be priests but cannot have their vocation tested,” said Deaconess McClatchey. The Bishop of Worcester, the Rt Rev Robin Woods said before the start of the ordination service that he was “not happy at all” about the demonstration.

THIS WEEK IN 1991:
A MASSIVE sewer-laying operation looks likely to cause traffic chaos in Worcester for 12 months, starting in late August.

Severn Trent Water is to spend £1.4 million constructing nearly a mile of trunk sewer from Barbourne to Bilford Road, going via Barbourne Road, St George’s Lane North, St George’s Walk, Gregory’s Mill Street and Kingston Avenue.