25 YEARS AGO

FEBRUARY 13, 1991

THE RECESSION was tightening its grip on Chard and Ilminster businesses and forcing some to close.

Unemployment figures for the area soared to 650, almost twice as many as this time the previous year, and the JobCentre warned there were only 13 vacancies to meet the increasing demand for jobs.

Many people were facing the prospect of long-term unemployment and experts were warning it could get worse.

PEOPLE who dug deep into their pockets to support the previous year’s Chard Carnival have helped St Margaret’s Somerset Hospice.

A cheque for £1,000 - part of the proceeds - was presented by carnival queen Joanna Brice to local hospice representative Jean Eldridge.

Wendy Clulow, chairman of the Chard Carnival Committee, who were celebrating their 25th anniversary, also appealed to local groups to enter into the next carnival event.

20 YEARS AGO

FEBRUARY 14, 1996

A WOULD-BE St George took on a dragon in Ilminster’s Meeting House art gallery - and both were injured.

Staff and guests at a private viewing were stunned when a man shouted an incoherent message before he approached a 9ft statue of a dragon wielding a trident and knocked it over.

The man was then understood to have run from the building with blood pouring from his face.

The dragon is back on show after an emergency weld repair to a broken leg.

COUNCIL tax in Chard became higher than anywhere else in the area administered by South Somerset District Council from April 1996.

An increase in Chard Town Council’s budget for the year 1996/7 to fund Guildhall renovations pushed up the town’s tax bill.

A typical band D property was likely to face a bill of £667.16, an increase of £45.68 on the previous year’s figure. That was an extra 7.4 per cent.

Last minute changes in Somerset County Council’s budget on February 28 could have affected the totals, but would not change the ranking order of the 121 parishes.

15 YEARS AGO

FEBRUARY 14, 2001

A QUARTER of Holyrood students in Chard were too ill to go to school as a flu-like bug swept through the area.

About 300 of the school’s 1,250 pupils were unwell in the previous week, while other schools struggled to cope when members of staff fell foul of the bug.

Widespread illness led to a shortage of staff around the county and Avishayes School in Chard and Wadham School in Crewkerne reported difficulties in finding stand-ins for absent teachers.

SUPERMARKET chain Sainsbury’s denied it was coming to Ilminster - for the time being.

Rumours had been circulating in the town that the company, which had recently sold its redundant Chard site to Abbey Manor Homes of Yeovil, was planning a store on the Shudrick Lane site, and that a planning application would be in by the end of March.

Sainsbury’s spokesperson Emma Cerrone said: “We haven’t got any plans for a future store in Ilminster in the near future. We’re not ruling it out, we’re always looking for sites.”