50 years ago

EXTRACTS from the Barry & District News of November 7, 1963:

• After an absence of five years HRH the Duke of Edinburgh returns to Barry on Wednesday week when he officially opens the new Barry Sports Centre Pavilion at Colcot Road. After the opening, The Duke is expected to watch some short demonstration matches on the sports ground, and he is also scheduled to inspect some exhibitions arranged in the Sports Centre before leaving Barry for Cardiff.

• More than seven years after work first started on turning the Gladstone Road tennis courts into a garden for the blind, the courts have deteriorated into something resembling virgin jungle - much to the disgust of nearby residents.

• While the battle of green and pink trading stamps has embroiled supermarkets in opposition to the big chain stores on a national scale, things are fairly quiet on the Barry front. A News and Herald reporter found that only a small proportion of shops in Barry give trading stamps, though they cover a wide range, including grocery, green grocery, butchers and fish and chip shops . . . and even a toy shop.

25 years ago

EXTRACTS from the Barry & District News of November 10, 1988:

• Within a few weeks of getting his new foot 38-year-old John Evans has moved up four leagues in his local squash club. ‘It made me a yard to a yard-and-a-half faster, I could really get there to play the shots,’ he said.

• Eighteen-year-old Barry snooker star Paul Dawkins, the reigning Welsh champion, flew out to Australia at the weekend hoping to win the world amateur championship starting on November 13. Dawkins one of the youngest players ever to line up for a world title shot, will face 56 other opponents.

• Kathryn Marsden, of Court Road, Barry, a pupil at Bryn Hafren Comprehensive School, who spent her residential project on a youth exchange in Hungary, will be one of 300 youngsters to receive their Duke of Edinburgh gold award on Tuesday next, November 15, from Prince Phillip.