Megan Wallace explores the Barnsley Chronicle archives... 1997
HARD-UP Barnsley Council is appealing for help to save two of the town’s landmarks.
It says it cannot afford to repair the Oaks Disaster Memorial badly damaged by thieves over the weekend.
Nor can it spare the cash to halt the decline of 12th century Monk Bretton Priory.
The repair bill for the Oaks memorial is likely to be £3,000 six times the authority’s annual budget for maintenance of all the borough’s monuments.
Police believe the memorial was damaged when thieves tried to steal the heavy bronze angel statue.
It is the latest in a series of attacks on the memorial, which was erected in 1913 as a tribute to the rescue workers who tried to save the lives of the 350 miners who died in he 1866 Oaks Colliery explosion.
It now stands in a council storage depot and may never go back on display unless a benefactor is found.
KERRY Barker has designs on men and it is leading her on exotic paths.
For 28-year-old fashion student, Kerry, of Cudworth, has been named as one of the finalists in the Brother Cup competition, to be held in Beijing, China.
In her final year at Bretton Hall College, she has designed and created a collection of menswear, and has also been accepted with three others as finalists in the Baird Menswear (suppliers to Burton’s) competition.
“It’s going to be a busy time. I’m not sure I will be able to fit everything in as it is important that I get my collection finished to qualify for my degree,” she said.
“Still, it is exciting to have been chosen,” she added.
The fashion department at the college is cock-a-hoop not only at her success but with the students as a whole.
For the first time the college has been invited to exhibit at the Graduates’ Clothes Show at London Fashion Week in June.
IT’S probably the world’s weirdest wedding - and it takes place at Barnsley Register Office tomorrow.
When Alan Chamber, 42, and Anne Whittaker, 69, marry they create the most complicated family tree of all time. The reason - Alan’s mother May, 68, is married to Anne’s son Wilson, 48.
That means Alan becomes his own mother’s step father and a number of other changes far too odd to contemplate. Twice previously married Alan, of Middlecliffe Lane, Great Houghton, reports that he’s very excited so is his twice previously married bride-to-be.
BARNSLEY is competing for 3,280 new jobs being offered by companies at home and abroad.
A ‘hit list’ of Japanese, Taiwanese, American and UK firms wanting to spend £56.5m has been drawn up by staff in the council’s economic development department.
Biggest prize on the list is a UK company which wants to set up a call centre creating 1,500 jobs.
Rivals for the £5.5m investment include the Manvers enterprise zone. An environmental recycling company which wants to create more than 400 jobs. A Taiwaese firm which makes computer monitors wants to create more than 200 jobs and invest about £10m.
