From the Chronicle files - Thursday 24th July 2025

Glossop Market Arcade was hitting the headlines 50 years ago this week - but for entirely the wrong reasons.

Councillor George Chatterton was branding the gateway to the market hall a blackspot and a disgrace to the town.

Fifty years on, the arcade is part of a multi-million pound rejuvenation package that also involves the Market Hall, Town Hall and Municipal Building.

The wraps will soon come off the town centre’s biggest ever investment project that will increase Glossop’s growing reputation as a place  to live and visit.

It’s rumoured the complex, including the arcade which currently is hidden  behind hoardings, could open in September.

It was a different story in 1975, however, when it was dark, dank, dirty and a target for vandals.

Back then, the High Peak Borough Council agreed that action was needed, and a £30,000 plan was immediately put into operation.

The entrance to the arcade was given a facelift, inside was a parade of shops, stonework was scrubbed clean and new lighting installed.

Now, thanks to hard work by councillors, the final piece in the jigsaw to the new look heart of Glossop will be put in place.

Football was taking over from cricket on the Glossop Chronicle sports pages even though it was the third week of July, 1950.

But it was all due to the summer game’s old enemy, rain! Most matches in our local league were abandoned, and perhaps it prevented another defeat for Glossop at North Road as opponents East Levenshulme racked up 185 for five before the match was called off.

Football fans were reading that Glossop FC, who had a less than successful season in the Manchester League, had been handed a dream home tie in the first round of the FA Cup.

Cheshire League side Altrincham would be the visitors, and if the Hillmen won, they would meet Macclesfield Town or Droylsden, also at North Road. In those days, Glossop’s two top sports teams shared the ground.

Many football clubs were holding their annual general meetings, and fans of Manchester Amateur League side New Mills were told that although income for the1949/50 season was £774, the Millers had lost £59.

But it wasn’t all bad news: The club had cash in the bank, and assets included its ground on Church Lane, which was valued at £1,700.

In other sports news, table tennis, badminton, snooker, billiards, darts and dominoes leagues were looking for new teams and players and preparing to draw up fixture lists.

Joining the Longdendale Darts League were the Bull’s Head, Tintwistle and Mason’s Arms, Hadfield, although teams representing the Gun Inn, Hollingworth and Manchester Corporation Water Works had resigned.

Glossop café owner James Broome told the Glossop Chronicle how he discovered a poster on the window of his premises on High Street East carrying a message written in ink accusing him of being a communist.

Saying he was very upset, Mr Broome said he was a trade unionist and had always voted Labour, but was not a member of the Communist Party.

A driver had a lucky escape when the brakes on his lorry failed and the vehicle overturned as he rounded a corner close to Bleak House on the Woodhead Pass.

The cab was partially crushed and a load of potatoes was thrown off and rolled down a hill, but driver Sam Byatte, of Winsor Street, Gorton, only needed treatment for cuts and bruises.

County councillors in Glossop and the  High Peak were complaining at the difference in the cost of homes they were building for general housing stock compared to those for the police.

The government had set the price of a council house at no more than £1,200, but said houses for police, which councils had to provide, had to be between £2,200 and £2,500.

A West Indian cricket fan here to watch his country play England in a test match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, was clearly bowled over at the view from the train window as it travelled through Woodhead and Tintwistle.

He told a Chronicle reporter in a nearby seat: “I never thought there would be such a lovely place so near to Manchester!”

Tintwistle Rural District Council was telling police it had not given permission for what the Chronicle described as ‘Gypsies’ to camp on any land it owned in the village, and that all Travellers should be asked to move on.

The council was also praised for being one of the few authorities in the area with public tennis courts to also loan rackets and balls.

Two Yorkshire shooters had to find another way of getting home after a mystery blaze destroyed their car on a visit to Crowden Rifle Range.

They parked up on the nearby main road, but soon after, officers in a passing police car saw it engulfed in flames. Fire crews from Glossop were called, but they were unable to save the vehicle.