100 years ago

YORK Minster bells had rung forth again with joyful melody after many months’ silence during their restoration.

The bells had been retuned and fitted with all the latest apparatus, including the Warner patented self-aligning, self-lubricating, oil-bath and oil-ring design of bearings, which eliminated all shock to the framework, and consequently to the tower.

This work had been carried out by Messrs John Warner and Sons, Ltd, bellfounders, Spitalfields Bell Foundry, London, who had also had charge of the placing of the bells in the tower.

A special service to mark the event had been held at the Minster. At the close of the address the choir sang an anthem, specially written for the occasion by the Dean, commencing, “Ring out, ye brazen tuneful peal,” to one of Dr Naylor’s prose tunes.

The beautiful and far-reaching tones of the renewed bells had been greatly admired by the citizens.


50 years ago

THE jury had given their verdicts in the Great Train Robbery trial at Buckinghamshire Assizes, at Aylesbury, and found seven men guilty of taking part in the 3am ambush of the Glasgow-Euston “travelling post office” on August 8.

With two others, the seven were also found guilty of conspiring to stop a mail train with intent to rob (banks had put their losses at a total of £2,517,975). Passing of sentence had been postponed.

The trial lasted 51 days, one of the longest and most costly in Britain. The jury were out 65 hours and the judge had recommended lifetime exemption from further service.

The accused were escorted from the specially-constructed wooden dock, one by one, as the verdicts in respect of each of them were announced to a silent, crowded court.

When the dock was eventually empty, Mr Justice Edmund Davies said he decided that all sentences in the case should be postponed until the summer assizes when all the criminal matters had been completed.


25 years ago

EDUCATION experts in York were to work on ways of turning the national curriculum green.

The environment and citizens’ rights and responsibilities were two themes which would run through all courses in the curriculum, and academics at the University of York were to develop ways of putting this into effect.

Members of the Centre for Global Education were currently launching their second book on environmental issues in education after three years of research funded by the World Wide Fund For Nature.

Green Prints for Changing Schools, jointly published by the WWF and Rogan Page, was a study of how some schools had succeeded in introducing courses designed to heighten awareness of environmental issues.