Two masked men tied up the cleaner then attacked a bank clerk and guard. But the clerk managed to set off the alarm and the robbers fled empty-handed.

On a lighter note January also saw a Jazz Club set up at the Old Clock Face Hotel in Toad Lane.

Rochdale born entrepreneur Peter Ogden was given a knighthood in the New Year’s Honours List.

With only 3,500 tons in council depots, Rochdale was 4,500 tons short.

Rochdale Area Health Authority refused to give assurances it wouldn’t happen despite pleas from health watchdogs.

There was a nasty shock for bingo enthusiasts at Hamer Working Men’s Club when part of the ceiling collapsed on them at closing time. Three people were taken to hospital, but fortunately nobody was seriously hurt.

One of the town’s biggest employers, Dale Joinery, went in to receivership in January with reported debts of nearly £18.5M. The firm finally closed in March, putting 195 people out of work

A spokesman said: "We feel it is vitally important in the future of Rochdale as a shopping centre that a decision on the future of the central area, and upon this scheme in particular, should be made at the earliest possible date."

Another internationally- known sportsman, golfer Dai Rees, visited Rochdale a month later to pass on a few tips to enthusiastic amateur players.

Some eight years on, the scheme to extend the tram system into the town centre remains in limbo, pending a decision on whether it is affordable.

It came three months ahead of schedule and was followed shortly afterwards by the link road linking the motorway with Slattocks.

Fierce blizzards blocked roads, caused traffic chaos and threatened food and fuel supplies. At one point conditions became so bad even a snow plough became trapped.

It was the same for burials with 33 being booked in one week during January.

Also in January bread delivery drivers decided to fix a minimum price of 18p on a loaf of bread but Asda in Nixon Street, Castleton, stood alone in defying the union by selling for a penny less, leading to empty shelves.

In July 1915, with the Army suffering from a lack of armaments, the Ministry of Munitions had made an urgent appeal to ‘all who were in possession of any class of machinery adaptable for the production of munitions to place their plants at the disposal of the nation and help make up a great shortage of shells.‘

The last troop in Rochdale to ditch the old and embrace the new were the First Rochdale, the town’s oldest scout troop but, in the 1950s, every scout group wore the hats, including the 17th (St James Dearnley) Rochdale troop.

Then the shout to which which thousands of Rochdale youngsters responded with the alacrity.

Michele Wigglesworth’s husband, Jack, is the great, great, great-grandson of one of the Mitchell Street house’s original occupants, a man by the name of John Buckley.

The monument, known locally as the Angel, stood at the junction of the Esplanade and Manchester Road until it was removed by the council in 1961.

Eddie Gomersall, a rubber worker, had set himself the formidable goal of beating a record set by the famous marathon walker, the great Dr Barbara Moore, for reaching Marble Arch.

Not many people will have heard of Cow Ark. After all, it’s not exactly on the beaten track.

But few could have captured the charm and obvious delight she took in performing official functions than this portrait, taken by the Observer's former chief photographer, Jim Rowbotham, in October 1970.

But on a country road, not far from Bridgemere Garden World, near Nantwich, only a handful of people laid wreaths on an elegantly simple blue brick memorial built by local volunteers.

They were sent in to the Observer by a former pupil, Sylvia Ward, formerly Sylvia Jackson, who still lives in the area, in Bruce Street, Sudden.

John Wharton is researching the Krulim festival, named after a small Pennine settlement near Barkisland in Calderdale.

But what he never did was blow up a chimney.

With much of the town blighted by smoke and filth Rochdale certainly wasn’t an ideal place to grow up.

Raymond Hepworth, aged 79, of Norden, contacted the Observer after reading a recent appeal for information about the maypole.

The First Rochdale Scout Group was formed in 1908, less than a year after Robert Baden-Powell set up the Boy Scout Movement.

The group has always been referred to by its literal form rather than the numerical way used by other Rochdale scout groups, such as the 7thA 15th, 27th and 37th.

Mr Ellis, who was born in Broad Lane, not far from where his father had a hairdressing business in Oldham Road, started his working career as a stripper and grinder at the Eagle Mill.

Mrs Hall, who was Frances Evans before her marriage, was one of a group of workers who made the daily journey from Wigan to work in the Queen Victoria Street mill.

Indeed in an age when Charles Dickens was making his mark, his moniker was ‘The Lancashire Burns’ – a compliment no other Rochdale-born writer, before or since, has come remotely close to emulating.

Tim used all his experience and newspaper knowhow to come up with this unusual view of children at Sacred Heart RC Primary School in March 1992 in a story about a nationwide anti-litter drive.

After 130 years of continuous running, the embers flickered and died in August 1968, although, in truth, steam trains in Britain gradually began disappearing in the early 1960s, not long after Dr Richard Beeching wielded his famous axe, decimating the country’s railways at virtually one stroke.

The Catholic Club in Ann Street began life in June 1958, renting a room in what was then the Station cafe in Maclure Road.

Possibly one of the best well known was the Roy Boulting production of ‘The Family Way’, starring John Mills, Hayley Mills, Hywel Bennett, Avril Angers and Wilfred Pickles.

The soldier is question is Frank Whipp, who Paddy Hartley, artist in residence at the Gillies Archive, Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup, believes may have had some connection with the Castleton switchgear works of Whipp and Bourne.

And this is surprising really, for the class, mainly comprising 10-year-olds, were about to take the dreaded 11 Plus, the examination which would set some of them on a course of academic achievement, others not so.

The photograph, which is owned by retired Terence O’Connor of Ellenrod Farm, Caldershaw, Norden, was taken at St John’s RC Junior School in Milk Street in 1946 or 1947.

Nuclear fuel, hydro, solar, tidal and wind power are all being touted as the way forward to meet our burgeoning energy requirements.

Alan McEwen is chronicling around 24 of the 90 chimney demolition jobs the late TV personality carried out during his 40 year career as a steeplejack.

It was 50 years ago next month that local commuters were able to travel from Rochdale to Manchester on diesel trains, rather than steam, although steam had a good few years left in it then, not finishing for good until 1968.

By 1830 the town had 38 cotton mills employing 4,296 and the number of mills continued to increase, particularly after the cotton famine of the 1860s when supplies were interrupted due to the American Civil War.

Hundreds of people looked on with a mixture of awe and fascination as an 18th century coach and four trundled through the town.