From the Evening News, November 7, 1976

25 YEARS AGO

BOLTON-born opera singer Jennie Bleasdale's face was blurred and shadowy, and at times the tiny flickering image was blotted out by "snowstorms" . . . but nobody cared about these imperfections.

For history was being made before the eyes of a handful of people who could received the first 30-line television concerts transmitted by John Logie Baird. The BBC has just celebrated the 40th birthday of its own TV service which started in November, 1936.

But Miss Bleasdale, of Red Cot, Chorley New Road, had faced the TV camera seven years before the BBC transmitted its first pictures.

In 1929, then a noted coloratura soprano, she was among a small band of singers brought together by Mr Baird. From his studio in Long Acre, London, Baird started a series of transmissions to demonstrate the invention which, for better or worse, was to change the lives of people all over the world.

50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, November 7, 1951

MANY Bolton people are unaware of the existence still, almost in the centre of town, of an interesting bit of old Bolton. Why, asks a reader, is the little street which connects Bradshawgate with Johnson-st., behind the County Grammar School, Great Moor-st., is called Bolling's Yard.

Explanation is that hereabouts was the approach to the old Bradshawgate Mill, perhaps the oldest in town and once driven by a water-wheel. It was built in 1787 by a man named Carlisle. Bolling was one of Bolton's first MPs, was his kinsman, and Bolling's took over in 1823, and added the concern to their Bridge-st. activities. A portion of the old Bradshawgate Mill was removed to make room for the railway in 1848, and another part was destroyed by fire in 1859.

125 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, November 7, 1876

NUMEROUS readers will learn with regret of the death on Saturday afternoon at half-past one o'clock, of James Kay, Esq., of Turton Tower, at the ripe old age of 71. Possessing a constitution of great strength up to six weeks ago he was hale and hearty as a man in his prime, but the strongest and most wiry of frames cannot, long after three score years and ten, sustain, untouched, the burden of so long a life, and at the latter end of September he was visited by a severe attack of liver complaint, followed by a slow but sure breaking-up of the constitution.

For 47 years the well-known Tower has been occupied by the family of Mr Kay, the father of who, the late Mr James Kay, of Preston, cotton spinner, purchased the Chapeltown estate from the trustees of the family of the Green, who, along with the Hoare family, had succeeded to the whole of the manor and estate of Turton after the celebrated Humphrey Cheetham.

Turton Tower, with all its venerable historic associations thus came into the possession of the deceased gentleman and his elder brother, Mr Robert Kay, who survives him at the Tower, the pair never having been separated.