1960's- The grand old men of Middle Rasen

The grand old men of Middle Rasen

How's this for staying power? The grand old men of Middle Rasen in this photo taken by your Mail in the early 1960s have a combined age of well over 450! Pictured, left to right, are Mr S E Codd (75), Mr T Boardman (72), Mr George Marrison (75), Mr W Hyde (71), Mr Robert Johnson (84), and Mr J P Rhodes (age unknown).

______________________

1961 - Cottage Hospital revisited


IT'S OVER 50 years since Market Rasen's hospital closed down and yet few people today realise that there ever was one.

The Market Rasen Dispensary was formed in 1857 and the Cottage Hospital itself 11 years later in 1868. The two facilities were merged and a building in Dear Street converted to house the new Market Rasen Cottage Hospital and Dispensary in 1871. In 1891, the Matron is named as Miss Joan Coles and the Secretary as Mr H. Gadd.
The hospital had four beds upstairs for maternity cases and four downstairs for general cases. It was financed by donations and subscriptions, which early in the last century amounted to about £60 a year. There were also dances, bridge drives, socials and church collections which helped towards the running of the hospital.
Management of the hospital was quite exclusive, which led to criticisms that this caused donations not being forthcoming since ordinary people did not feel involved in the hospital. Patronesses were traditionally the Countess of Yarborough and, for many years, Mrs Tennyson d'Eyncourt of Bayons Manor.
Medical care was provided by resident nurses, who lived at No 7 Dear Street, and the town's doctors, who had to apply to be appointed to the medical staff – unpaid – in order to go and treat their own patients. There do seem to have been one or two occasions when doctors were not allowed onto the staff. All this, of course, was before the National Health Service came into being and all medical care was paid for. People usually belonged to clubs into which they paid money each week to pay for their medical care or hospital stay in the event of illness or injury.
Apparently, the regular Market Rasen fair of Smith and Warren used to give one evening's takings to the hospital. One night, one of their four sons was taken ill, but the hospital refused him admission. The fair never made a contribution again.
There are some interesting little stories from former patients.
Jack Cook, of Chapel Street, recalls that there was a bed there which, in the 1930s, notoriously usually seemed to finish off its occupant!
First to go was a Mr Parker of Tealby who died there from pneumonia. Next in the bed was a motorcycle victim who died nearly straight away. Jack's own father was then taken ill and taken to the hospital with a 'demon' arm!
Jack recalls: "Mrs Knott the matron went into him one night – 'Hey Peter, I've got some bad news for you. There were two people that died on that bed and there will be a third!'
"After three weeks, a Dr Torrins was called in to give an opinion and he said 'Get this man off your hands, he will die here,' so they took him to Lincoln where he recovered, living until the age of 91."
In 1940, it was decided that the Cottage Hospital was no longer suitable to be used for maternity cases and warnings were given that this would put the whole future of the hospital in jeopardy.
Sure enough, the hospital was closed on May 17 1941.

The two nurses bought the building and continued to live and operate the district nursing facilities from there. After the district nursing ended there, the two ladies, Nurses Langley and Wholey continued to live there as a purely private residence until 1961, when it was sold to the present owners. It remains largely unchanged since its hospital days.
Our thanks to the present owners, Mr and Mrs B. Atkin and to the other people who sent in memories and reminiscences.

Market Rasen Cottage Hospital and Dispensary as it is today. The original tilted front door is one of only four similar doors in the county.

The patients' buzzers are still in the kitchen.

The former mortuary, now surely one of the most ornate garden sheds you could find anywhere. The former wash-house with its copper and original fireplace also still stands.

____________________________

April 1961 - and meet Market Rasen's mole man!

WHEN Mr Arthur Wright retired from farming at Tealby Thorpe two years ago friends told him that he would have a hard job to fill in his spare time. They need not have worried. As it has worked out, he has had practically no spare time at all.
Exercising his skill as the best amateur mole catcher in Lincolnshire, he has practically cleared the immediate neighbourhood of Market Rasen of moles since he arrived on the Walesby Road side of the town and his present score of over 1,500 is still mounting.
Mr Wright told a Mail reporter: "Mole catching has always been a hobby of mine. I used to do it when I lived at Tealby. So when I looked out from my present house and saw a lot of mole hills in the field at the back I thought straight away, 'I will have some of them,' and I did.
'That started the ball rolling. Other people asked me to help them clear their land of moles. I got some traps and set about it. I said I wanted 1,000 moles by my birthday last May. I got over 1,000."
Mr Wright recalled that people had said that there would not be any moles left after the dry summer of 1959 and it was, he thought, true that the moles would find it hard to get enough food for themselves and their families and some perished.
The 1959 dry spell was a setback for the moles but in November and December of last year there were some good patches and in the present late winter and early spring still more moles have been caught.
Mr Wright shoots moles as well as traps them. His records show that since he came to Market Rasen he has accounted for 334 in this way. He shoots them when they reveal their presence while they are burrowing under the ground.
The war which Mr Wright wages against the moles still continues. Normally moles abound in sandy soil and light loam such as is to be found near Rasen. But, with Mr Wright about, they haven't much chance.
Mr V. J. Lucas, clerk of the course at Market Rasen Races, spoke of the way in which Mr Wright had practically banished the mole from the steeplechase course.
"We hardly ever see a mole hill now," he said. "We are not the only people who benefit. He keeps them down on all the land surrounding us."

___________________________

1962 - Bond, Coronation Street and the last steam train!

Licence to thrill: Sean Connery as 007 made sure the Sixties started to swing.

"BOND...James Bond" with those legendary words from the lips of Sean Connery in the 1962 movie Dr No the Sixties really started to swing!
How many Mail readers of a certain age remember as schoolboys sneaking into the cinema 40 years ago to watch 007 save the world?
It was a good thing we had James Bond around in 1962. He helped keep our minds off a real threat to civilisation as we knew it - the Cuban Missile Crisis.
There were other distractions too. Teenagers were listening to the first Beatles hit and the whole family was sitting round the TV watching Z Cars, Sunday Night at the London Palladium, Take Your Pick and Emergency Ward 10.
But what was going on closer to home? Well for a start a lot of Rasen folks were fuming that they couldn't watch TV at all!
Thanks to a fault at the new electricity sub station on Tealby Road TV reception was badly affected and so were household appliances.
Mr J W Stainton, radio and TV specialist of Middle Rasen, told the Mail at the time he had received over 400 phone calls from viewers asking why they were getting such a poor picture.
Rasen residents may not have been able to watch new soap opera Coronation Street - but at least they could meet the stars.
Peter Adamson who played Len Fairclough, Doreen Keogh who played Concepta Hewitt and Ivan Beavis who played Harry Hewitt appeared at Market Rasen Racecourse in September dressed as bookies.
It was the end of an era at Market Rasen in 1962 when the last steam train pulled out of the station for Cleethorpes at 8.16pm on Saturday September 8.
From the following Monday the entire passenger service on the branch line became diesel operated.
The last of the steam trains was taken out of use for 'economy' reasons.
Also in '62, De Aston School announced numbers in the sixth form were up to 50 for the first time in the history of the school - making a grand total of 300 boys.
Meanwhile, the new Fire and Ambulance Station was unveiled to the public on Linwood Road. It cost £5,500 to build.
Market Rasen parish church marked the centenary of the restoration of the building by architect James Fowler.
There was sadness when the oldest inhabitant of Market Rasen, Methodist church stalwart Mrs Mary Jane Hill (101), of Queen Street, died.
And the opening of Rasen's new Co-op store on the site of the old town hall in the Market Place was greeted warmly by townsfolk.
Quite a year for Rasen - and the world. But have things really changed all that much?
They are still talking about a swimming pool for Rasen as they were back then - and the new James Bond film is about to come out!

_________________________________

Click on >> button for next page!