Cause of fire at Unionist Club in Thurso ‘unknown’, councillors unite over £5 key charge and MADD group go glossy
LOOKING BACK: News from the John O’Groat Journal of yesteryear
Fire at Thurso club
From the Groat of February 27, 1925
There had been a “considerable stir” in Thurso “when the news spread that fire had broken out in the Unionist Club premises in Manson’s Lane, and a large crowd speedily gathered in the immediate vicinity of the club-rooms”.
Thanks to the activities of the local police force, the fire brigade and members of the public, the fire had been confined to the seat of the outbreak and was quickly extinguished.
The cause of the blaze was unknown. It appeared that two members of the club had been playing billiards in a room on the ground floor and, when they left at around 9pm, there was no sign of fire. However, by 9.30, two passers-by “observed the glow of the flames reflected in the front window of the top floor and raised the alarm”.
Elsewhere, James Cormack, resident in Jamaica, had sent the museum in his home town some “interesting gifts”. He had donated to the Wick Museum a flying fish, two kinds of fiddle fish, a seahorse, shark, porpoise, whipray, cowfish, sheepfish or trunk porcupine, sucking fish and a hawksbill turtle.
In a letter he said he wanted to give Wickers the “opportunity of seeing denizens of the deep other than the local ‘sellag’”.
Council house charge condemned
From the Groat of February 28, 1975
Councillors in Wick and Thurso had united to make an “all-out stand” against “district council dictatorship”.
The trouble stemmed from a decision by the district’s housing committee to impose a £5 key charge on all 4700 council tenants.
The idea of the levy, to be paid during one of the tenant’s rent-free weeks, was “surety against them leaving the houses without making good any damage”. The money would be refunded if everything was in order.
Thurso town councillors were the first to condemn the charge and were particularly unhappy that it would apply to “model tenants who had been in council houses for years”.
At a meeting of Wick Town Council, Thurso’s stance received strong support.
Dean of Guild James Miller described the decision as “regrettable” and said he wholeheartedly agreed with the Thurso provost who called it “undemocratic and dictatorial”.
Elsewhere, 14-year-old Wick High pupil Razia Amin had been named the winner of the north of Scotland regional final of the fifth UK Schools Fish Cookery competition.
Razia was now to go to London to compete in the national final against 14 other regional winners. This was the third consecutive year that Wick High had had a pupil in the national final.
Centre stage to centre page for arts group
From the Groat of March 3, 2000
The young members of a local arts and drama group had centre-page prominence in an issue of a glossy newsletter distributed to organisations throughout Scotland.
The two-page spread, which featured photographs from some Wick MADD Society shows and rehearsals, highlighted the work of an “innovative expressive arts project”.
Two members of the society who had taken the lead roles in MADD’s Christmas panto, Cinderella, also appeared on the front page of Engage! newsletter, issued by the Scottish Study Support Network.
The article gave details of the history and aims of the arts group, which was in the process of making a bid for funding to “develop and support study aspects of its work”.
MADD had been set up in 1997 to bring together school pupils and members of the community to “foster a love of expressive arts among young people”. It now had a membership of 100 and a substantial proportion of Wick High’s pupils regularly got involved in its many productions, which were supported by volunteers from the community.
Two of its members had gone on to study drama at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, while academic achievement in music at the school had improved.
