HERE’S a selection of stories as they were reported in the Chronicle in November 1980.
DIMINUTIVE Neil Mills is only six, but already he is an old hand at winning dancing medals.
Since he took up dancing at four-and-a-half he has already collected 45 medals, and on Sunday he chalked up his first big success when he won a trophy for the best performance in Frank and Christine Bostwick’s School of dancing old time dancing competition at Newton Hall, Chapeltown.
Neil is a pupil at Bostwick’s dance school at Darton, where he practices intricate steps in modern, old time and Latin American dancing each week.
He has already gained bronze, silver and gold awards for old time dancing, and his ambition is to go one step further and pass his gold bar examinations.
The youngest on of Mr and Mrs Laurence Mills, Park Close, Mapplewell, Neil attends Mapplewell Junior and Infant School.
TWO thousand acres of industrial and derelict land in the centre of Barnsley are to receive a huge face-lift, in an effort to ‘rectify the legacy of the industrial past’.
The land, which is bordered by Lundwood, Stairfoot, Measborough Dike, Hoyle Mill, Honeywell and Smithies, is to undergo a massive conversion in an effort to turn the area into a pleasant valley full of recreational opportunities.
Known as the East Barnsley Recreation Project, it is a major joint plan by the South South Yorkshire County Council and the Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council to create a parkland area in the middle of the town.
A REVOLUTIONARY power station has been established in the Barnsley area.
If the project is successful, it should reverse the trend where oil-fired and nuclear power stations have been taking over from coal-burners as Britain’s main source of electricity.
Over £20million has been spent on setting up the fluidised bed experimental station at Grimethorpe and a further £20million will be spent over the next three years.
FOR the first time in its history the Test and County Cricket Board has offered three-year contracts to three top umpires in the country. And Barnsley’s Dickie Bird is one of them.
In the past, all the first-class umpires have been on yearly contracts, but now Dickie and two of his test match colleagues, David Constant and Barry Meyer, have been given the security of an extended period.
Dickie was informed of the good news by a letter which stated that the reason for the three-year contract being offered was the ‘high standard of umpiring’ he had shown.
