HERE’S a collection of stories from the Barnsley Chronicle’s archives as they were reported in March 1974.
DOMESTIC ratepayers in the Barnsley District Council area will almost certainly have to pay 6p in the pound more than the domestic rate which the council agreed to last Thursday.
The council is expected to decide, at a meeting next Tuesday, to pass on in full to householders the shock blow it suffered only hours after last Thursday’s meeting, when it was announced that the government rate relief to householders would be a flat 13p throughout England.
Before they lost power at the general election, the Conservatives had decided on a variable government rate relief figure, and Barnsley householders were to have received 19p in the pound.
The council’s finance committee discussed the implications of the decision of the new environment secretary, Anthony Crossland, to allow a flat rate support grant at their meeting on Tuesday.
Coun Jack Ashmore, finance vice-chairman, said: “The government decision was quite a blow to us.”
STREAKING, the American craze of running about stark naked, hit Barnsley on Tuesday night — but the only gain from the exercise was goosepimples.
The streaker’s 10p-a-spectator proceeds - earned for the 200-yard return journey between two Barnsley town centre public houses - were given to a friend who disappeared while the streaker got dressed.
And now the 23-years-old streaker cannot remember which friend held the takings, which were in the region of £3.
The streak started after the man accepted a bet to go to the bar in his underpants and jumper.
He then accepted a challenge to streak through the town centre to another pub. He ran in the middle of the road, clad only in his socks.
An eye-witness said: “He got a great reception. Everybody was laughing and applauding. Young couples in cars stopped and started throwing 10p pieces at his feet.
“A bus driver managed to pace his bus at the side of him, before a police car arrived and the streaker made a hasty exit.”
AFTER spending all his teaching life in Barnsley area schools, Mr Clarence Edgar Hirst retires at the end of this term.
Mr Hirst, who has been headmaster of St Helen’s School, Carlton, since it opened in 1963, began his teaching career in 1933 at Racecommon Road School.
He has also taught at Hoyle Mill Junior School and Ardsley Oaks, and has been headmaster at Hoyle Mill, Grove Street Secondary and finally St Helen’s.
For many years he has been associated with school football.
A former secretary of the Barnsley Schools’ Football Association, he was secretary of the Yorkshire Schools’ Football Association and a member of the English Schools’ Football Association.
Mr Hirst, 62, of Darfield, will be succeeded by Mr D C Bate, who is at present at a school in Leeds.
MINERS at Barnsley area pits could soon be setting up new output records and making an even more important contribution than in the past to the mining industry’s drive to meet the nation’s demand for coal.
Production at the 19 Barnsley area coalfield pits last week, the first week after the miners’ strike, was 125,000 tons.
This was 85 per cent of the average weekly output in October last year before the overtime ban was imposed by the NUM.
It was one of the best output achievements in the country, as the national average output last week was 75 per cent of the pre-dispute figure.
