The Local Register

Contributed by Angela Drakakis-Smith   The Local Register is the ‘new’ name for the Local List which was initiated last year.  The first round of buildings to be ‘listed’ now form the basis for this new Register.  At the time ‘foul’ was called when it appeared that some areas were over-represented on the list to [...]

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Magazine Editorial – Autumn 2010

This issue sees the beginning of the third year  of the Newcastle-under-Lyme Civic Society magazine.  During this time we have tried to keep our readers informed about our various activities trying to make Newcastle Borough a better place in which to live and work.  We have printed articles covering a wide variety of subjects, but [...]

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POWER TO THE NIMBY ACTIVIST

  By Griff Rhys Jones, by permission of Civic Voice and the  National Trust  A few years ago, standing on a bridge, overlooking a motorway that enabled people to roar across Glasgow at ninety miles an hour (at enormous cost to architecture and quietude) I was proudly told by a charming Civil Engineer that the [...]

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Civic Voice

Contributed by Ron Redgewell   Civic Voice was launched on Saturday 17th April.  This registered charity has been formed in part to replace the ’folding’ last year,  of the ’Civic Trust.  This  was set up in 1957, by the Conservative Minister Duncan Sandys, to protect the country’s built heritage following the wholesale demolitions that were sanctioned after [...]

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Please Take Your Litter Home

Contributed by Dave Adams Executive Director, Operational Services, NBC   M ost of us will recognise the slogan above from the national Keep Britain Tidy campaigns.  But how many of us realise that the campaign, originally started by the National Federation of Women’s Institutes and endorsed by celebrities such as Abba and Morecombe and Wise, [...]

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Schools Project

Contributed by John Sutton    The children of today are the citizens of tomorrow, and we believe that it is important to encourage them to take an interest in their town and its development.  To this end we set up an annual competition in 2006 for year eight (12-13 year olds) in  all the local [...]

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My Year as Mayor of Newcastle-under-Lyme

David Clarke – Newcastle Borough  Councillor writes     Each year Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council elects two of its sixty serving councillors to be civic dignitaries.  The Mayor and Deputy-Mayor take an oath to uphold historic traditions, promote the good name of the Borough, and carry out their duties diligently and impartially. Following their installation, each [...]

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Schools Project

Contributed by John Sutton   After last year’s rather disappointing result we have  for 2010 returned to our original theme in 2006 of asking year eight students to write an essay to describe How they would like to see Newcastle develop over the next ten years.  This was very successful the first time and we [...]

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DNA of the Civic Society

By Ron Redgewell   Following the end of WWII there was a general move throughout the country to replace damaged and destroyed buildings with ‘modern’ concrete and glass ones, most local councils followed this pattern. There were a few examples where landlords/tenants withstood this mania, one such group being the Inns of Court, to the [...]

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Newsletter – Summer 2009 – SCHOOL PROJECTS

Contributed by John Sutton Our project this year for year eight pupils in the Borough was to devise a project in which your school could become involved with the local community.  Show how the community, your school and the pupils would benefit from this project. We felt that this well represented the ideals of the [...]

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