25 years ago: June 7, 1997
ABOVE: Children at Newark’s Bowbridge Infants’ School have made a collage to help promote the annual sunflower campaign to raise money for Newark and District Hospice Aid.
Each pupil has also planted a sunflower for a competition to grow the tallest plant.
So far there is no sign of Newark’s first drive-thru fast food restaurant due to be built on the edge of town.
But that will all change later this month as McDonald’s literally move in overnight.
The company plans to complete the £1m project in 24 hours.
It will be built on farmland between Lincoln Road and the A46 bypass — next to the 40-bedroom Travel Inn hotel and Brewer’s Fayre pub restaurant currently under construction.
Rocker Dave Bartram, lead singer with Seventies band Showaddywaddy, helped launch the Newark Festival programme, which organisers promise will be bigger and better than ever.
The festival has been extended from five to nine days and will take in two weekends.
Showaddywaddy will provide the festival’s finale.
Funeral director Miss Julie Hall is to face the might of the Gladiators on television after becoming super-fit digging graves.
Miss Hall, of Westgate, Southwell, was chosen as one of only 32 contestants selected from more than 23,000 applicants.
Regulars at a pub are in uproar over plans to turn their favourite pub into a private house.
The Eight Bells, one of three in Caythorpe, Lincs, has served the village for more than 300 years.
50 years ago: June 10, 1972
Above: Visitors to Southwell Minster Grammar School’s annual fete can be sure of one thing — there will always be something unusual in the way of sideshows.
Here, Richard Smallwood and Nicholas Phillips try walking backwards through a string maze.
Killer beads are being handed in to Trent Division police station and the advice to anyone possessing some — burn them.
The Home Office warn that strings of beads made from a type of poisonous East African bean are being sold. Swallowing them could be fatal.
Known as ladybird beads, they are shades of red and brown with black spots.
Newark housewives will have little to complain about this weekend. They will pay less for the weekend joints than their counterparts in most other parts of the country.
This is despite a record day at Newark Cattle Market where more cattle than ever went under the hammer and prices were the highest paid.
But butchers say these increases will take at least two weeks to filter through.
A Newark Town Council delegation will travel to London to meet the Minister for Industrial Development, Mr Christopher Chataway.
It wants to discuss the town’s economic situation after the proposed RHP redundancies.
The cost of drinking is soaring, according to Newark’s MP Mr Ted Bishop.
He said beer prices had risen by 10.9% since the last General Election and is pressing the government to control prices.
100 years ago: June 7, 1922
The Magnus Grammar School sports field was a riot of colour and happiness on the occasion of the School Sports.
Gay parasols lined the course, sheltering visitors who had assembled to encourage the less fortunate but equally happy competitors who perspired beneath the force of a glaring sun.
The Great Handke, who is appearing at the Kinema this week, will endeavour to escape from a coffin made by Mr Harry Hurst, of Barnbygate.
A large crowd and glaring weather attended the fete and gala held on Sconce Hills in aid of the Newark YMCA and YWCA.
The holiday spirit caught all and from noon to nightfall, festivity was rife.
With the advancement of summer rapid progress is being made with the two locks which Nottingham Corporation is constructing on the Trent as part of the scheme to make the river navigable at all seasons of the year.
The final effort will be to convert the Trent between Nottingham and Newark into three long pools deep enough to float barges of 120 tons at any period of the year.
“I’m tired of unemployment and thought I would do something one way or another to get out of the way,” a defendant told a special sitting at Newark Borough Police Court.
He was charged with stealing a camera value £2 2s 0d, property of Mr W. P. L. Harrison, electrician, Cartergate.
He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a month’s imprisonment with hard labour.