Readers' letters - August 11

Hospital staff will have to pay more for parking but at what cost to local residents? See letter

I refer to the article on the proposed increase in parking charges at hospitals in Preston and Chorley (LP August 3).

It also appears that a revised strategy is being developed as regards hospital parking.

Unfortunately, yet again, no consideration has been given to the relocation of the 600-plus staff who currently enjoy free parking on the nearby residential roads.

With the new increase in charges to staff on the hospital site, it is likely that this number will further increase, with more inconvenience to residents.

Over the past five years, three different hospital directors of estates have repeatedly made promises to relocate staff from these residential roads.

Further promises were also made by the chief executive at public meetings in 2015 and 2016. Not surprisingly, nothing has materialised as regards any of those empty promises.

The 600-plus staff continue to enjoy free local parking adjacent to their workplace, the hospital management avoids having to incur leasing charges on parking land, along with associated regular transport costs to and from the hospital.

All of this is at the expense of the local residents/council taxpayers, who continue to be greatly inconvenienced from Mondays to Fridays when the area resembles a scrapyard, making access around local roads very difficult.

Please Mrs Partington (chief executive), sort it out.

You have stated that you want the hospital to be seen as a good neighbour.

Now is your chance to prove it.

Fed up resident

Fulwood

Armistice mystery

Our village, Burton in Lonsdale, just across the border in North Yorkshire, is planning a series of events to commemorate the centenary of the Armistice this November.

One of these is a community concert, loosely structured around how people in different places heard about the Armistice.

We know that an impromptu celebration was held in our village hall, on the very day of the Armistice. We have a newspaper cutting about this.

What we don’t know is how the villagers got the news so quickly, or how this type of news was communicated home a century ago.

The nearest large town was Lancaster, there was a post office in the village and we believe this had some sort of telegraph system.

It’s probably a long-shot, but does anyone know anything about this?

Mike Biles

via email

If you can help, please email us on [email protected] or ring 01772 554537. We will pass your details on.

They were great to pose with

Re: Geoff Wilkinson’s claim that the photograph of the building in Cheapside, Preston, was The House of Bewlay (LP Letters, August 8). According to my memory and Barrets, 1948 directory, this was Yates Jewellers.

I think The House of Bewlay was on the corner of Guildhall Street and Fishergate, where Leader’s Ladies’ Frock shop used to be.

It was the shop where I bought Balkan Sobranie cigarettes in the mid-1950s. Not because I enjoyed smoking them but they were great to pose with.

Valerie Andrews

St Annes on Sea

Thanks for the laughs, Barry

Imagine the scene as the hearse arrives carrying Barry Chuckle’s coffin.

The pallbearers step forward and ease out his coffin from the hearse, each saying to one another ...

“To me!” “To you!”

Thanks for the laughs, Barry. Even when dead, you can still make us chuckle.

Neil Swindlehurst

Walmer Bridge