125 Years Ago – 1894

Information has been given to the police to the effect that a man of the name of Michael Kenny is missing. He is a person about thirty years of age and has been living at Beanlands Parade, Ilkley. It is supposed that he has committed suicide, as he has been very strange in his manner of late. He disappeared on the 25th inst. about 6am, and wore at the time a dark check coat and a pair of clogs.

William Woodhead, a farm labourer returning home from Ilkley on Saturday, about a quarter to eleven, discovered that a fire had broken out on the premises of Mr. Benjamin Dobson, of Carr House Farm, Askwith. He at once raised an alarm, and it was found that a stack of straw and a thrashing machine were on fire. Several other people in the neighbourhood who had noticed the flames came and rendered assistance in carrying water from a well.

100 Years Ago – 1919

Thirty-two of the Belgian refugees resident in Ilkley left for their home land by the 11.15 train this morning. They journey by train to Hull and then cross the North Sea to Antwerp. Many friends gathered at the Ilkley Railway Station and gave the refugees a hearty and affectionate “send off.”

Mr. Joseph Cooper, of Norwood House, Grove Road, Ilkley, has generously offered to purchase the piece of land at the junction of the Grove and Bolton Bridge Road, and present it to the town as a site for the erection of a war memorial.

75 Years Ago – 1944

Captain K. W. Horner, a former member of the Editorial staff of the “Wharfedale and Airedale Observer,” has arrived home on leave after three years service abroad, chiefly in the Middle East and Ceylon. Captain Horner took part in the operations at Crete in 1941 and was among the men safely evacuated from the island. He had an interesting meeting with Bowes, the Yorkshire and England cricketer, who is now a prisoner of war in Italy.

Looking ahead on home conditions and outlook in the last war as compared with those of the present war perhaps the difference which strikes all those old enough to remember is the manner in which this time there is every desire so to plan ahead that there will not be a repetition of the unfortunate mistakes which were made after the last war. To a large degree, of course, many of the difficulties which were encountered all over the world were the inevitable outcome of war. We learnt in boyhood that money spent on fireworks left nothing when the fireworks were over. In war there is the additional fact that countries have been ravaged and cities destroyed and the cream of youth that should be responsible for the re-building has been sacrificed.

50 Years Ago – 1969

A valuable pedigree English Setter pup travelled on its own on a flight from London Airport yesterday for Canada. It was sent as a present by Frank Laycock, of Rombalds Stride, Maxwell Road, Ilkley, to his sister who emigrated some years ago. One of a litter of seven bred at the home of Mr Laycock, it left Ilkley without a pet name on Wednesday, and was flown from the Leeds/Bradford Airport to London where it was met by RSPCA officials. Following an overnight stay at the Society’s kennels, the eight week old pup, slightly sedated for its nine hour trip, was put on a flight for Canada.

Many people who read this article will have already had their careers chosen for them – selected by their parents, perhaps, or by fate, chance, luck, or whatever else you like to call it. By anything, or anybody, in fact, except themselves. Terrible blunders are perpetuated by those who chose careers for the young.

25 Years Ago – 1994

Ilkley’s controversial bypass scheme has been suspended as part of a Government review of the national roads programme. The Department of Transport insists that the dual carriageway proposals have not been scrapped.

An issue of The Times dated November 7, 1806, which announced the death of Vice Admiral Lord Viscount Horatio Nelson, was just one of a group of newspapers found by an Otley woman when she was sorting through her later husband’s belongings.