100 years ago

The archway of Monk Bar, York, was currently closed for the first time in the memory of the existing generation.

The portcullis, made of massive oak, had been lowered the previous day, and needless to say it had attracted a great deal of attention, hundreds of people having visited the Bar during the day.

The Bar was undergoing repairs with a view to being used more as a show place than it had been hitherto, and in the course of the operations it had been found necessary to drop the massive barrier, estimated to weigh at least a ton, down to the roadway, on which the iron-tipped spikes rested for the first time for at least half a century.

On the lower part of the portcullis were two square openings - one on either side, but it was considered by many people strange that there was not a wicket gate at the bottom by which persons could pass in and out. The foreman in charge thought that the openings had simply been cut as a matter of convenience, because the apartment directly above had two windows, and these square openings would allow the ledges of the windows to be used for storing articles when the apartment was inhabited.

 

50 years ago

A door had blown off a US Air Force transport plane being piloted by an RAF exchange officer, at 19,000 ft over Tennessee and one of the crew had been sucked out to his death.

Another crew member grabbed a chain attached to a heavy tool box as he, too, was sucked out of the 12ft hole near the front of the plane. For a moment he was suspended in the air outside the four-engined C 130 turbo-prop plane, until other men hauled him back. The British pilot, David Parsons, landed the plane with its nose upwards.

The plane skidded 5,000ft along the runway after touching down on its rear wheels only. Then the nose of the plane tipped over, but there were no injuries.

 

25 years ago

Roadworks had upset York’s sewer rats and sent them scuttling across the city, taking cover in buildings.

The Victorian city centre sewers harboured a plague of rats that was making some shopkeepers’ lives a misery. The rat problem, described by one shopkeeper as “unacceptable”, was one that sufferers preferred to keep quiet. But the assistant chief environmental health officer, Alan Henderson, said his department had dealt with several calls to rat-invested shop premises in the city centre recently.

Rats were also dealt with by six or seven commercial companies such as Rentokil, so calls to York City Council might have represented only the tip of the iceberg.