LOOKING back on some of the stories the Gazette has reported through the years...

September 1966

MORE MEN were brought in to speed up construction work on the Chipping Sodbury relief road. 

Mr BW Mansell, of the county surveyor’s department, told the quarterly meeting of the Sodbury-Yate town co-ordinating services committee that it was the county’s intention to boost the labour force “very considerably”.

He reported that construction work on the relief road itself was well under way, but the increase in labour was needed so that access would be available into a new housing development by the time building on the houses was complete.

AN 80-TON flying test bed took to the air. 

Bristol Siddeley test pilot Tom Frost flew a Vulcan bomber with an Olympus 593 engine slung in its bomb bay for an hour. 

The engine, which was not fired during the test, would soon power the supersonic Concorde airliner. 

The flight marked the first of a series of tests on the engine, four of which were due to power the Concorde in 1968. 

Engineers said that if the engine had been started in flight, the Vulcan bomber would probably have broken up.

September 1976

IT WAS reported that a 22-year-old man ‘went mad’ with his cheque book, spending £200 despite only having £2 in his bank account. 

Keith Brown went on the spree, which included Giro cheque frauds, and appeared before Dursley Magistrates’ Court, pleading guilty to three deception charges and asking for 19 others to be taken into account. 

The magistrates adjourned the case for two weeks for social enquiry reports. 

Inspector John Pearce said that Mr Brown opened an account at a Dursley bank with £2 and at that time was working as foundry clerk. 

The account was opened in early July of this year, 1976 but in days the bank manager was returning cheques worth nearly £100 and the account was closed just three weeks later. 

In that month, Brown passed more than over £200 of bouncing cheques.
He also admitted stealing a money order belonging to a Stanislaw Rozalezak and attempting to gain two Giro cheques. 

In a statement to police Brown said: “I went mad with the chequebook, writing cheques left, right and centre with full knowledge that there were no funds in the bank.”