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NOSTALGIA: Pupils plant tree tribute to John in 1989




Nostalgia: Tree planting at Elmswell Primary School in 1989
Nostalgia: Tree planting at Elmswell Primary School in 1989

This photo shows tree planting taking place at Elmswell Primary School in December 1989.

Pupils were allowed to take time out of their day to help plant trees in memory of their favourite village resident, John Costello, who had died earlier that year.

Two trees, a pink-flowered cherry tree and a disease-resistant elm, were planted as a memorial to Mr Costello, who was a former governor of the school and an enthusiastic supporter of tree planting campaigns in the village.

Teacher Heather Swayne is pictured here with five-year-old James Winter, eight-year-old Hayley Roper and parish tree warden John Ibbetson.

HEADLINES FROM THE PAST

10 YEARS AGO

Residents were angry at plans to turn a residential area in the centre of Lakenheath into a haulage depot.

Timberland Homes Ltd, which owned Lakenheath Hall, had advertised its plans to apply to the traffic commissioner for a goods vehicle operators licence.

Specific details included turning Lakenheath Hall, which had been converted into flats, into an operating centre for eight goods vehicles.

Rose Bussey, who lived next to the site, said: “We think it is disgusting because there is no access for lorries. It is just a track.”

Bruce Rutterford, leader of Forest Heath District Council, said it would make traffic in the village worse.

25 YEARS AGO

The closure of Reeve Lodge sheltered accommodation for the elderly in Ixworth had been condemned as a ‘scandal’ by Bury St Edmunds Labour Party.

They were demanding to know why district councillors from the area had not protested about the temporary loss of the badly-needed facility.

The criticism followed the revelation two weeks earlier that the 22-unit home, one of two in the eastern area of St Edmundsbury, had been empty since December of the previous year. Plans to renovate it had been held up by the council’s cash problems.

A council spokesman said negotiations had begun to see if a housing association could run it.

100 YEARS AGO

A good story was told by an Ixworth soldier, W Hammond, MT, when home on leave recently.

He, with others, were out with the cars, somewhere in France one day, when they ran up to a patrol of Germans, who immediately made them prisoners.

Hammond’s overcoat was soon on the back of one of the Huns.

After remaining with the patrol for about three hours they were ordered to get into the cars again, and with German drivers were being driven to the enemy’s base.

Luckily the drivers took a wrong turn in the road, and shortly found themselves in the English lines, to the great delight of the little party of motorists, and to the evident chagrin of the German drivers.

-- Do you have a nostalgic picture or memory to share? Email laura.smith@jpress.co.uk