From The Chronicle files - 5th June 2025

It was February 1940 and the early months of the Second World War and Glossop had a battle to fight which was closer to home.

The town and the rest of High Peak lay under a blanket of snow, and more was on the way.

The Glossop Chronicle reported that conditions were as bad as the last huge surge of snow 46 years before.

Isolated villages were cut off from Glossop and other Peak District towns, roads were blocked by huge drifts and there was neither the council workmen nor the machinery to shift the snow.

Villagers’ only option was to sit the storms out, and wait for ploughs to cut a single track through.

Public transport ground to a halt, even trains were out of action as fresh falls of snow continually recovered the lines.

The Chronicle coverage in February of that year revealed in words and pictures just how bad conditions had become.

A new law came into force this week making it illegal for businesses to sell or supply single-use vapes.

Turn the clock back to the Second World War years, when no one had even heard of vaping, and it was a very different story. 

For thousands of cigarettes from Glossop were being shipped across the Channel by boat or flown to airfields in mainland Europe  - as part of the government's ‘Cigarettes for Soldiers’ campaign.

It was a way of boosting our troops’ morale and giving everyone in Britain a chance to play their part, in sending what were called ‘comforts’.

Smoking was popular back then and seemed quite harmless, cigarettes were plentiful and seen as the best way of people ‘back home’ to show support by sending supplies.

The Chronicle publicised the campaign and the response was tremendous. Factories, sports clubs, churches, organisations, traders, businesses and townspeople sent thousands, some in parcels with handwritten messages expressing their love, gratitude and overwhelming support.

Work to transform Broadbottom’s former railway goods warehouse into a leisure centre for Tameside was hitting our headlines at the start of 1986.

The building that was once part of the station was already being used as a riding for the disabled centre, but the council was convinced it had the potential for much more.

Within 12 months a thriving gymnastics club was also operating from there, while an indoor bowling rink was to follow.

The Wind In the Willows Hotel on Hurst Lane, Glossop,  was hitting the headlines for accommodating one of the world’s most famous screen ‘baddies’.

The towering Dave Prowse, who played Darth Vader, but who also doubled as the kindly Green Cross Code man in a series of road safety awareness slots on television, stayed there during a promotional visit to Glossop and Mottram.

But the hotel also made The Chronicle in 1986 when we reported that it had been featured in a tourist guide of the nation’s best hotels.