From the Reporter files - 22nd May 2025

Just after the Second World War, the first television transmissions in Hyde were received on Werneth Low. 

The North Cheshire Herald had been there to witness the historic moment and  more than 20 years later, was reporting another broadcasting ‘first’ for the town.

In early spring 1967, Fred Dawes electrical store on Market Street had taken delivery of a 25-inch TV set which could receive programmes in colour.

With black and white still the ‘norm’,  the staff and curious customers visiting the shop were treated to a fascinating glimpse of the future.

For the time being, BBC2 was the only colour channel, but the limited number of programmes made in the new format was about to increase over the coming months.

Priced at £267, the new set offered an impressive quality of colour ‘easily comparable with cinema technicolor.’

Store manager John Warburton said no special aerial was needed.

Council house rents were usually expected to go up each year but for once, the weekly amount paid by Ashton’s 6,000 tenants was coming down.

In 1967, a cut of between one and three pre-decimal pence per week was considered significant. Since the last rent increase, the council coffers were in a much healthier position with a surplus of £21,000. It was a very different story in Hyde, however, with rents rising by up to nine shillings per week - and as many as 560 tenants refusing to pay the increase.

Serious doubts had been raised over plans to turn Fairfield High School into a sixth form college.

It was all part of a radical change of approach by the new Conservative-controlled Lancashire County Council who announced that most of the area-wide changes planned for 11 to 18s’ schools over the next 18 months  would now be reviewed.  

Moves to breathe new life into Dukinfield town centre, expected to cost around £800,000, were rubber stamped by the government.

More than 200 homes would be built on a prime site bounded by Wellington Street, Peel Street and George Street.

A new era of neighbourhood policing in Ashton, Mossley, Droylsden, Audenshaw and Denton would see officers in ‘panda cars’ patrolling the area.

The turquoise and white cars were set to become a familiar sight on the streets, aiming to provide a much-needed back-up for the traditional bobbies on the beat. 

An Audenshaw chrysanthemum grower was using atomic radiation in a bid to produce bigger and more colourful blooms.

With support from the Ministry of Agriculture, Alan Bromley was preparing an exhibition area next to his greenhouses on Ashton Moss to show the results to interested individuals and societies later in the year.

Similar experiments elsewhere with cabbages had produced plants many times the normal size, but it remained to be seen whether it would be the same with the chrysanthemums.

For the first time in probably 100 years, Ashton would be without its traditional Whit Friday walks.

In its place the town’s Anglican and free churches were combining for a service and procession on Trinity Sunday, June 4.  Canon Colin Lamont, rector of Ashton Parish Church, said some schools were no longer on holiday on Whit Friday while others were taking children away to camp for Whit week.

A retired staff reporter who spent most of his career covering Dukinfield news for the Reporter was among the guests of honour at the National Union of Journalists’ Diamond Jubilee dinner in Manchester.

William Edgar Mee, 85, of Lynwood Grove, Audenshaw, had been a founder member of the union and a long-serving officer of the Ashton and Hyde NUJ branch, one of the oldest in the country.

Hyde’s Rosemount Methodist Church was preparing to welcome BBC organist and broadcaster Sandy MacPherson for a special concert, also featuring renowned soprano Eunice Lavelle and the Crewe and District Male Voice Choir.

With 500 tickets sold, it promised to be one of the church’s greatest ever musical events.