50 years ago

Extracts from the Barry & District News of January 2, 1964:

• One of the final steps in getting Butlin’s to Barry Island was taken by the Barry Corporation at the meeting on Monday when they passed a resolution requesting the Town Clerk to “prepare and complete, at the earliest possible opportunity, a formal agreement with Butlin’s Limited, subject to such conditions as he may think proper to safeguard the interest of the Corporation.”

• Despite heavy swell and low temperatures, more than 20 people made the annual pilgrimage to the Breaksea Lightship on Christmas Eve with the large hamper of Christmas goods ever donated by the people of Barry for the men on the lightship. The Mayor (Ald Brinley Williams) made his first trip to the Breaksea. Aboard the lightship a short Christmas service was conducted by Mr F N Beardsworth, the Port Missionary, Cardiff.

• One of the main points made by Barry Corporation in their latest bid to save Barry Docks from closure is to emphasise that firms sited on the docks were being discouraged from expansion by the uncertainty of the docks’ future. The Corporation’s official representations to the National Ports Council were published on Monday.

• At the Romilly Bingo Club on Friday, Alfred Newman of Beverley Street, Cadoxton, brought off one of the biggest coups yet recorded . . . to win £1,833 11s for a stake of 1s. The success story will end tomorrow (Friday) when Tony Lewis, the well-known Glamorgan cricket and rugby player, will present a cheque to Mr Newman at the club.

• Two Barry girls have been successful in passing the November examinations in pathology and bacteriology for the degree of MB BCh at the Welsh National School of Medicine. They are Joyce Colven, of Pardoe Crescent, who father is Mr G Colven, the well-known Broad Street jeweller and Patricia Anne Lennox of The Court, Cadoxton, whose father and mother are both doctors – Dr C B Lennox who is in private practice and Dr Mary Lennox, who is Barry’s Medical Officer of Health.