A PUBLIC inquiry is to be held in to the controversial question of the future of Pickering railway station, it was revealed on Wednesday.

The Department of the Environment, in a letter to Coun Alan Pickup, who has been fighting for two years for an inquiry, said there would be two inquiries in one.

The first will be under the 1896 Light Railways Act for the granting of an application for a light railway order between High Mill Bridge and Bridge Street, Pickering, where the railway station is sited.

The department said that a second inquiry would also be held at the same time to deal with the application by Pickering Urban Council to demolish the railway station, a move which the North Riding County Council has opposed.

The urban council wants to create a car park, shopping development and riverside walk on the station site but the North York Moors Historic Railway Trust wants the station as its terminus for the Pickering to Grosmont line.

Coun Pickup said: “I am delighted that an inquiry is to be held because there are many matters concerning the station which need to be made public.

“This is an issue which concerns the whole of Pickering and has caused a great deal of concern to many residents.”

From the Malton Gazette & Herald from this week in 1973

 

THE long-awaited Malton bypass is almost certain to be one of the casualties of this week’s mini budget, with its cuts in public spending.

According to a letter received by Norton Urban Council from the North Riding County Council, the official starting date for the bypass is next December.

But the urban council clerk, Bill Morrise, said that in view of the massive cuts announced by the Chancellor, that starting date would probably have to be postponed.

The campaign for a bypass has been going on for nearly 40 years, and the council chairman, Coun Alec Hares, said ruefully that it looked once again that they were going to have another long wait before it was actually built.

From the Malton Gazette & Herald from this week in 1973

 

NORTON Urban Council’s Public Health Committee recommended that a meeting should be held with Malton Urban Council to discuss the possibility of constructing a new competition-size swimming pool to serve the entire district.

Norton has its own £21,000 plan for covering in and modernising its 60-year-old open air swimming pool.

This plan, as FP Taylor, clerk of the council, explained, had been approved and was almost ready to proceed. The council was planning to invite tenders to carry out the plan at the end of the next summer season so that the modernised closed-in pool would be fully ready for the 1966 season.

From the Malton Gazette & Herald from this week in 1964

 

BOYS from Castle Howard Approved School, Malton, have been earning the gratitude of the old age pensioners in Malton and Norton.

In the past two weeks, seven of the boys have chopped or sawn up piles of old woods which had been given or obtained by members of the Malton and Norton Rotary Club.

Then, under the supervision of the staff and Rotarians, they have delivered two bags of wood to each of the 250 needy old age pensioners in the district.

The boys, all well built and aged about 16, volunteered to do the job in their spare time.

The Homes Office was told of the scheme and gave it their official blessing. Mr GW Dawson, chairman of the Rotary Club community service committee, has received letters of appreciation from pensioners.

Some of the boys from the school have also dug and planted about 36 old age pensioners’ gardens in the district.

In one case they planted the garden mainly with cabbages at the special request of the tenant, who said she was particularly fond of cabbages.

From the Malton Gazette & Herald from this week in 1964