Bomb hoax

A hoax letter bomb addressed to the Watford Liberal Democrat candidate, Mr Anthony Jacobs, was intercepted by the Watford Sorting Office on Tuesday morning and passed to the police for inspection. Discovery of the fake bomb followed an anonymous telephone call to the Evening News informing them that a number of letter bombs were on their way to liberal candidates. The caller added: “If you don’t believe me contact Mr Jacobs, the candidate at Watford.” Police Chief Roy Purton said afterwards: “It was definitely a hoax, but we alerted people and took the necessary precautions.” Police and stewards also made a search of the town hall before Tuesday night’s joint meeting of the Liberal candidates for Watford and South West Hertfordshire.

[March 1, 1974]

Skeletons discovered

The burial vault of a well-known 18th century Watford family has been unearthed by contractors on the central car park site in Beechen Grove. Inside the bricked-up tomb they found four disintegrating lead-lined coffins containing the “definable skeletons” of local benefactor David Salter, his wife and two daughters. Name plaques place the date of the burials in the early 1800s. Workmen excavating the site of Watford’s new £10m shopping and social centre discovered the vault last week. David Salter, a deacon of Beechen Grove Church, set up a trust for four almshouses in 1843. The original Salter’s Almshouses were in the High Street near Watford Field Road. These have now been demolished.

[March 8, 1974]

Silvan scene

A £1,000 tree-planting scheme to brighten a busy main road in Rickmansworth was completed this week. 200 trees were planted alongside the Denham Way, Maple Cross. It was Rickmansworth Urban Council’s last contribution to the Plant a Tree campaign.

[March 8, 1974]

Good for commuters

Main line services from Watford Junction are to be more than doubled in May – and to bring more cheer to local commuters, work on a massive new car park at the station is now under way. Under British Rail’s summer timetable inter city services will be more frequent and speedier. At present 26 main line trains leave the junction daily. This will be increased to 57 on May 6. The car park extension will provide 600 extra spaces – bringing the park’s capacity to nearly 1,000.

[March 15, 1974]

Triumph and tragedy

A black cloud hung over Monday’s celebration party to mark the runaway box office success of Watford Palace Theatre’s production of Fallen Angels. For in the early hours of that morning the wardrobe store – including hundreds of costumes collected over the past three years – and the scenery workshop were badly damaged in a blaze. It has dashed the theatre’s plans to start a costume hire service and left production manager Chris Barron with a king-sized problem. For there was nowhere to make costumes or scenery for the next repertory production which opens on March 27.

[March 15, 1974]

The winner

The name of the big new shopping-YMCA-market complex being built in the central car park redevelopment scheme could be Charter Place. In the competition run by this newspaper and Watford Council, not one but two people came up with the name. They will share the £20 first prize. One winner is Mr Henry Chaplin, of Chipperfield, an old-age pensioner and television engineer. The other winner is Mr Duncan Blackmore, of Watford, who works in the borough treasurer’s department.

[March 15, 1974]

Pond ghost town

Watford’s pond shopping precinct – one a high class trading area – is in danger of becoming a ghost town unless landscaping improvements are carried out soon, according to a businessman. And a town hall official revealed this week that there will be a lengthy delay in improving the appearance of the precinct – disrupted by recent redevelopment works. The work was to have been finished by mid-summer, but now the end of the year is the target for completion. This will disappoint traders in the precinct, who have had to suffer two years of disruption, which they say has hit trade.

[March 29, 1974]

Market moves

Watford’s market men got out the champagne on Saturday in a toast to their last day on the site they were leaving after 45 years. Today market traders will be welcoming their customers at the market’s new, though temporary, site on the ground floor of the Shrubbery car park, next to Gade House. This week the old site, near Cawdells, and the new market were both hives of activity as the old stalls were dismantled and the spanking new stalls stocked by their owners.

[March 29, 1974]

What was happening in the world in March 1974?

• Grand jury concludes US President Richard Nixon is involved in the Watergate cover-up (March 2)

• Following a hung parliament in the UK general election, Prime Minister Edward Heath resigns and is succeeded by Harold Wilson (March 4)

• The first issue of People magazine is released in the US, with Mia Farrow on the cover (March 4)

• Charles de Gaulle Airport opens in Paris (March 8)

• The last Japanese soldier, a guerrilla operating in Philippines, surrenders, 29 years after WWII ended (March 9)

• Mount Etna in Sicily erupts (March 11)

• Ted Bundy victim Donna Manson disappears from Evergreen State College in Washington. Her body is never found (March 12)

• The five month oil embargo by most OPEC nations against the US, Europe and Japan comes to an end (March 18)

• Jefferson Starship begins their first tour (March 19)

• An attempt is made to kidnap Princess Anne in London’s Pall Mall (March 21)

• The Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang is discovered in China (March 29)