EXACTLY 50 years ago, Northallerton was launching itself into the future as a modern shopping town.

The Chamber of Trade had teamed up with the local council and, most importantly, with almost every retailer on the High Street, to reshape and restore the town centre.

“It shows what can be done by co-operation in a market town like Northallerton,” said the Darlington & Stockton Times on October 8, 1966.

Today, rather than co-operation, we’d call it “partnership working” and, by coincidence, the scheme sounds extremely similar to the Business Improvement District which is currently being pulled together to promote the town centre.

Back in 1966, a couple of days before the formal reopening of the High Street, the D&S carried a long report about the initiative and three large pages of adverts from almost every business on the High Street. The words in the article are, of course, very informative, but it is from the adverts that you get a real feel of the times, and so we are delighted to be able to reproduce them here.

You could visit Di Palma Bros’ Friarage Bar for an authentic Italian ice cream or call in for a vinyl record at Thirlwell’s where the Top 50 was always in stock. A Jones sewing machine was £5 19s 6d, and if you took “pride in your pipe” Alan Brown’s tobacconist had “everything for the discriminating smoker”.

And Barkers, which called itself “the fastest growing store in town”, was promoting a new kind of curtain. “Velvet,” it said, “makes a picture of any window.”

Of the 200 businesses between South Parade and the church, 170 had signed up to the Chamber of Trade’s scheme, and practically each one had either repainted or just washed down their shopfront.

Overhead wires had been removed, new streetlights installed along with paving, seats and street furniture so that "the unique composition and character of Northallerton’s principal thoroughfare may be appreciated more fully".

The D&S said: “Visually, the High Street has gained a fine, fresh, open complexion from the facelift, the removal of the clutter of overhead electricity lines being a marked feature of the change.

“The provision of new litter receptacles in attractive concrete containers, has enabled the urban council to get rid of the old metal bins which clung to the lighting standards.”

Parking areas had been provided to make the centre attractive to motorists from further afield.

But the paper was really taken by what had been done at the All Saints end of the scheme.

It said: “The unification of the church green with the surroundings of the old churchyard, the re-seeding of the lawns and the neat kerbing of the area with new seats under the magnificent trees, has created the most attractive area the town has.

“When old people's bungalows are completed in the area of the old Rose and Crown (now demolished), this green area round the church will be popular for relaxation on a warm and sunny day.”

This, though, was just the beginning. Northallerton was a booming town. Its population of 6,930 had risen by ten per cent in a year. “There is every confidence in the town reaching its own goal of 30,000 by 1981,” said the D&S. This turned out to be fanciful – by 1981, the town had barely broken the 10,000 mark and in the 2011 census, its population was recorded as 16,832.

Yet back in 1966, there were other schemes in the pipeline – even if, rather like today, they were being held up by central government’s reluctance to spend. “The High Street improvement scheme is only one feature which will affect the country market town, though further changes may be delayed because of the present ‘freeze’ in the country's economy,” said the D&S.

However, the demolition of the 1873 Town Hall had already been agreed. It was described as being like the constriction in the centre of an hourglass – all the flow of the High Street had to slow to go round it, and so it would be demolished as soon as a £70,000 civic centre was built elsewhere.

“The area of the present Town Hall would then, it is suggested, be laid out as a paved and planted area, which will create an expanded vista of the High Street,” said the D&S.

Perhaps it was a good thing that this part of the scheme never came to fruition because the Town Hall, as awkward as it may be, gives a character to the street that an empty plaza would not have.

Nevertheless, when the revamped High Street reopened exactly 50 years ago, most people seemed extremely happy with the progress they had witnessed. The scheme, said the D&S, turned Northallerton into “an important modern shopping centre” which would “match the needs of trade and commerce of a wide area, and keep abreast of the town's development”.

This was a forward-looking town that was on the move.