25 Years Ago

April 7, 1978

Mr Peter Shore, Secretary of State for the Environment, has now laid before Parliament a Special Development Order giving planning permission for the building of a reprocessing plant for irradiated oxide nuclear fuels at Windscale.

50 Years Ago

April 11, 1953

Easter hunting was spoiled by April snowstorms, with the tops white throughout the weekend, and the Lunesdale's three kills in two days topped the returns. With Easter over, the packs will soon come to the end of fixed meets and stand by for lamb-worrying calls.

100 Years Ago

April 11, 1903

The eccentricities of workhouse management have frequently been a source of merriment among those who are happy outsiders. I don't think anybody can be merry over the story which comes from Cork, where it has been reported to the Board of Guardians that the workhouse pigs have died because they were fed on the linseed poultices which came from the fever hospital. Pigs are notoriously not choice feeders, but this is horrible, especially as coming from a land where the pig is supposed to be treated almost as a domestic pet. We are not told whose brilliant idea the poultice was; but the curiosity of the Cork authorities should not rest until the author is discovered and pilloried, as he deserves to be.

Bumble was bad enough, but he never did anything so unspeakable as this.

150 Years Ago

April 9, 1853

A valuable lump of nugget, of the purest description of black-lead, was found a few days ago by a little boy, son of Mr John Bowe, farmer, of Newlands, near Keswick.

Some time ago an ancient wall was pulled down to make way for some farm buildings. The little boy was playing last week among the stones which had composed the wall, and discovered one of them, as he thought, so dark and soft that he called his father's attention to it as a curiosity. Mr Bowe at once detected its true nature and found it to be a block of black-lead of the purest quality, 2lb 3oz in weight, which the builders of the old wall had ignorantly employed as a stone in its construction.

Previous to its being employed for that purpose, it is supposed to have been used for marking sheep, according to the very ancient custom in this country; and to have been brought for that purpose from the far-famed mine in Borrowdale. Except in the mining districts it is, perhaps, not generally known that black-lead is by far the most valuable of the mineral products of England; the piece above described having been sold by Mr Bowe for several pounds sterling.

April 10, 2003 15:00