July 1976
Isle of Wight County Press
July 3rd 1976: ANNUAL FETE – Southern Television personality Peter CLARK opened Westmont School’s annual summer fete recently. It was organised by the Parent & Teacher Association, and there were competitions and stalls. Among items for sale were bottles, clothes, books, plants and home-made cakes. The event raised the record sum of £124—almost double last year’s figure. The money will be used for school amenities.
July 3rd 1976: RYDE AREA TOUR – Members of the Ryde Group of the IW Society were taken on a conducted walk around the Ryde conservation areas following their recent annual meeting at Ryde Parish Hall. Group leaders gave brief histories of buildings on each route.
July 3rd 1976: DISCOURAGE POP FESTIVALS – South Wight borough councillors were warned on Tuesday that if the authority ever has to cope with a free pop festival in their area, they should ensure there was no repetition of “a major problem” that arose at the time of the mammoth 1970 IW Pop Festival. They also decided that the council should do everything possible to discourage free festivals taking place in the future.
July 3rd 1976: BEACH RESCUE – It should be a small jewel of a beauty spot, a quiet tree-fringed cove of fresh shingle with the sparkling of a small stream running across it. Instead, Binstead Cove is covered with rotting seaweed and the washed-up debris of the holiday trade and passing ships. Now an “environmental rescue” operation has been put into action by the children of Mayfield Middle School, Ryde. It began as a voluntary undertaking on the school’s recreation afternoon, but the school are now building it into the curriculum.
July 10th 1976: IN DIFFICULTY – Two young children, visitors to the Island, were rescued from Appley Sandbank, Ryde, on Monday afternoon, when they were cut off by the tide. Their danger was spotted by Mr. M. W. OAKHAM, accompanied by Mr. Joe BISHOP, a Ryde lifeguard, while Mr. OAKHAM was making his regular safety patrol by boat on behalf of Medina Borough Council. (More about Mr. Oakham here)
July 17th 1976: PHONE NUMBERS – Ryde telephone numbers are now prefixed by the number six for people dialling from outside the town. Callers forgetting the extra digit will be greeted by a recorded message asking them to dial again. A Post Office spokesman said although callers inside the town had had to add a six since November, it was decided to delay adding the extra six from callers outside Ryde because holiday brochures were already prepared before November.
July 17th 1976: MINI-BUS FUND – A Summer Fair at Ryde High School, on Saturday, raised £189 for the school minibus appeal—despite competition from several other events in the area. Parents, teachers and pupils combined to organise the event, which attracted hundreds of people throughout the afternoon.
July 24th 1976: RYDE TRAFFIC – Ryde’s long-awaited traffic quiet scheme for the middle section of High Street comes into operation on Monday. The scheme will operate for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for an experimental period of six months. One of the main intensions of the scheme is to substantially reduce the number of vehicles using High Street by diverting them around the area, and this is achieved by a number of new one-way streets.
July 24th 1976: MODEL RAILWAY – The Wight Model Railway Group’s first exhibition was staged at Ryde St. John’s Women’s Institute Hall on Saturday and Sunday, and response from young people and adults was encouraging. The Layouts, both operational and static, demonstrated an impressive degree of realism. The group was formed in January 1974.
July 24th 1976: FLATS FOR THE ELDERLY – A housing association application to build 30 old people’s flats and a warden’s flat, with community rooms in three and four-storey blocks, on the site of the Bellevue Garage, East Street, Ryde, has been approved by Medina Planning Committee.