Shop tenants in Charter Place have set up an action group to fight for better conditions on the precinct. And they have drawn up a list of their complaints to present to the borough council.

The shopkeepers are concerned at the dirty state of the precinct, drinking vagrants, vandals, and technical troubles like inadequate goods lifts, broken-down escalator, dull lighting and a shop indicator board which, they say, is also inadequate.

One tenant, Michael Mazillius, who opened a lamp and shade shop on the precinct’s first floor only five weeks ago, said: “I have had several brushes with the council and the council’s Charter Place authorities over these problems and rules and regulations they won’t bend, and I have come to the conclusion the borough council work solely for themselves and not for the good of their tenants. If a private developer ran this as a commercial undertaking and ran it like the borough council, the place wouldn’t last five years.”

[From the Watford Observer of December 20, 1977]

 

Hal Bryan, star of Watford’s Palace Theatre pantomime, fell and broke his left arm during the first performance of Dick Whittington on Boxing Day. With the characteristic pluck of his profession, Hal finished the show, holding his painfully broken arm. In the evening he again ensured “the show must go on” and next morning had his arm set at Watford Peace Memorial Hospital before carrying on as usual on Tuesday afternoon.

[From the Watford Observer of December 30, 1960]