50 years ago

Extracts from the Barry & District News of April 9, 1964:

• Within the next 10 years, Barry is going to need 650 OAP dwellings and 876 council houses, the Borough Treasurer and Housing Manager (Mr C T McLeod) told the House Management Committee on Monday. The council already have programmed 164 houses and 48 OAP dwellings, and according to Mr McLeod’s report, 3,000 dwellings are eventually envisaged for the new Gibbonsdown Estate. The News and Herald understands that the cost could run into something like £10m.

• A number of Barry Town councillors did not know the amendment to the Corporation’s Parliamentary Bill for the disposal of land for the proposed Butlin camp until the story appeared in the press at Easter, according to Major Sidney Luen. Speaking to a News and Herald reporter on Monday Major Luen said that he had first head that the amendment was going to be inserted on February 5, when he was notified of the position by the Commons, Open Spaces and Footpaths Preservation Society, who had been instrumental in getting the Corporation to accept it.

• Eight sixth-form pupils from the Barry Boys’ Grammar Technical School left by minibus on Tuesday for a week in North Wales. There under the tuition of their senior geography master, Alun Thomas, they will make an intensive study of landforms and land use in the Cader Idris, Snowdonia and Llangollen districts. The Boys – Mark Chapman, Clive Cooper, Jeffrey Dennis, Philip Ellet, Terry Humberstone, Gareth Lewis, Philip Morgan and Peter Sharp – are studying geology for “A” level examinations and most of them hope to continue their studies at college and university.

• The Minister of Labour, Joseph Godber, departed from his prepared timetable when he visited Barry on Tuesday in order to pay a short visit to Barry Island to see the site of the proposed Butlin Holiday Camp. He told the News and Herald that the Mayor (Ald Brinley Williams) had been so enthusiastic about the scheme when he visited the Mayor’s Parlour at the beginning of his two-hour visit that he decided to fit in a visit to the Island to see for himself.