From the Evening News, August 4, 1976

25 YEARS AGO

HUGE windows at Horwich Leisure Centre are to be bricked up to muffle noise from late-night music sessions. The centre lost its music licence earlier this year after complaints from people in nearby Victoria Road. Now Bolton Council is to spend £36,000 modifying the centre, opened two years ago.

SOCIAL Security chiefs were today planning an investigation as criticism grew over the disclosure that jobless people can visit Spain on holiday - and keep their full dole money. Officials will seek ways to plug the loophole.

50 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, August 4, 1951

THIRTY Bolton schoolboys are due to arrive home today after a holiday which has been a real adventure. They will return to their homes with minds broadened, and with new thoughts and fresh ideas about life, for they have lived for a week not as town boys but as water gipsies.

For seven days they have been passengers (and worked as members of the crew, too) in two cargo boats which have sailed 150 miles along inland waterways through some of the loveliest country in the world at the time of year when it looks its best.

The boys, Folds-rd. County Secondary School pupils, were accompanied by school staff and two bargees.

125 YEARS AGO

From the Evening News, August 4, 1876

ST Ann's School, Turton. - The following is the report of H.M. Inspector on the above-named school:- "The school is in very good order, and the singing is carefully taught. The scholars did their standard work accurately, neatly, and readily. They also answered well in grammar, geography and history. The needlework is very neat and well arranged. Altogether the school is doing very good work."

AN important contest took place on the river Thames on Saturday evening, and attracted as many persons to Putney and Hammersmith as one sees on the great boat race days. The competitors were E.T. Jones, of Leeds, for some time teacher of the art of natation at the Bridgeman-street Baths, Bolton, and J.B. Johnson, of Blackburn, and they had agreed to swim from Putney Aqueduct to Hammersmith Suspension Bridge, for the Champion Cup and £100 a side.

Jones waited until Johnson had gone about six yards before he started, but the advantage was not long maintained by the Blackburn man, for his opponent caught him at the steamboat pier, and led by ten yards at the London Boathouse. At the Point, Jones was thirty yards in front, and swimming the same even stroke, won by sixty yards in 35 min. 25 sec.