Do you remember when Ormskirk had its own council, a Magistrates court, one of Lancashire’s best open markets and lots of independent shops?

The days when you could drive through the town – and park for free outside the shops! – enjoy a film at its own cinema, and when half day closing on a Wednesday was a feature of the AA guide to Great Britain. And back then, Edge Hill was a College, not a University...

You do?

You’ll also remember when it had its own local weekly paper, but as Roger Blaxall discovered Ormskirk Advertisers of January 1967 were a lot different than those of January 2017...

Back then of course it was completely independent, owned by the Hutton family of Moss Bank, Aughton – one of cub reporter Roger Blaxall's first reporting jobs in 1975 was to attend the funeral of one of the last members of the family at Christ Church, Aughton accompanying chief reporter, the impossibly glamorous Shirley Garside (they travelled there in her MBG GT- those were the days...)

Fifty years ago, the 5 January edition reported changes to the members of staff with managing editor John Prescott reporting a new editor Madeline Were and one Geoff Howard promoted as chief reporter on the Maghull and Aintree edition which along with the Ormskirk and Skem. New Town editions made up the Addy ‘family’

Big news back then was very parochial which explained its sales figures of over 30,000 a week – a far cry from today. The bad news on the horizon is the looming ABC* stats for 2016 Advertiser sales which will probably show another drop as more and more of the paper’s traditional readers eschew the paper's dearth of local news and features which were such a mainstay of each edition 50 years ago.

So what was in the headlines?



These stories are from the first Ormskirk edition of 1967 which at a 28 pages covered all manner of local news. Edition number 11,577 was just 5d which bought you a superb read which would take a good hour or so – more if you scanned the fantastic array of farming news, the small ads. and property and motors pages which all helped pay the bills and make a handsome profit no doubt for the Hutton’s – little wonder United Newspapers were to swoop in the mid seventies to buy all three Advertiser titles...

Good, honest local news was a staple of the paper with reports of a four year old girl from Whalley Drive, Aughton treated in hospital for burns - her family all lived in one council house where she was the youngest of 12 children, baby number eight for Rosemary Liggat of Cunscough Lane, Melling - then still part of the old West Lancashire Rural District of course - news that County Road, Ormskirk was to be asphalted for the grand sum of £2850 and moves to preserve the identity of Ormskirk from the machinations of neighbouring councils.





Features included an exotic piece on Digby Martland of The Heritage, Rufford who was racing a Chevron GT at a 24 hour race at Daytona Beach, Florida and a report of a quaint Christmas wedding were Pauline Jones and Anthony Shacklady who’ll have recently celebrated their Golden wedding (where are they now?)







And those wonderful adverts – one with a Tawd Vale phone code – this is when you could buy a three bed semi on County Road from Edward Jackson for £3,000, a 1961 Morris Minor van for £150, one year old Triumph 2000 for £995 (what do you mean it’d be dear to run, four star Jet fuel from the 24 hour Ormskirk Motors petrol station was 5s 1d...) with jobs on offer at Edge hill College run by Lancashire County Council, at £12 two and eight pence as a groundsman and a firm on Windmill Avenue, Ormskirk looking for folk to manufacturer chammy wash leathers. Balmforths wanted two new and used car salesman and Ribble Holidays would take you to Majorca for 15 days at £46 and 4 shillings with seven days in Torbay just £27.

Those were very definitely the days!

*Audit Bureau of Circulation