From the D&S Times of...

150 years ago

December 30, 1865

A MOST remarkable robbery had been perpetrated in the early hours of Christmas Eve on a railway traveller in the Dales. "On Saturday evening last, Mr Jonathan Horner, of Darlington, left that town by railway, on visit to his friends in the neighbourhood of Middleham," said the paper. "On leaving the Bedale station, his money – eight sovereigns, contained in a bag – was all right.

"Between that station and Leyburn, he fell asleep, and on arriving at Leyburn station, he found that during the time he had been asleep his trousers had been cut in three places, in a triangular form, to his pocket, and the money and purse were gone.

"The train was heavily laden with passengers, but no lights are in the carriages and this, no doubt, had assisted the thief to accomplish the robbery. No trace has been found of the delinquent.

"It is a subject of complaint that the North Eastern company have not their carriages lighted, as their not doing so is enabling both robberies and other disgraceful proceedings to be committed without the chance of detection. The train was upwards of three hours behind time in reaching Leyburn, arriving there at 1.30am, instead of between nine and ten in the evening."

100 years ago

January 1, 1916

THE weather and the war had put a dampener on Christmas 1915, the paper's North Yorkshire correspondents reported.

In Ripon, "the Christmas season passed very quietly... the weather was wretched. Rain fell in torrents on Christmas Eve making things very uncomfortable for late shoppers".

There was no pre-Christmas rush in Richmond, either, where Catterick Camp was deserted. "It was the quietest weekend experienced for some time owing to the thousands of soldiers and camp workmen having gone home for the holidays," said the paper.

These were pre-tarmacadam days, and most of the correspondents noted that the wet weather that caused the Swale to rise had ruined the rural mud roads. "In Northallerton, on Christmas Eve the air was humid, and the roads dirty, and there was a remarkable scarcity of carol singers," said the report. .

Perhaps the Masham correspondent captured the mood of the county most succinctly. He said: "Taken altogether, Christmas has passed very quietly, no doubt owing to many local young men being away on active service, their parents having little desire to have celebrations during their absence."

50 years ago

January 1, 1966

A BIG headline proclaimed that "Northallerton enters enter 1966 with its future undecided". The creation of Greater Teesside and the separation of Guisborough and Stokesley districts meant that 30 per cent of the North Riding's population of 412,000 was no longer going to be controlled from the county town, diminishing its influence – and local government employment.

The local urban council, though, had a modest plan to grow Northallerton's population to 30,000 by 1981, but there was great alarm at the rumoured prospect that Harold Wilson's government would introduce a regional planning policy that would turn Northallerton into a "regional city", with a population of half-a-million.

More likely to come off, though, was the plan of consultant architect Peter Hill, which had had "a great response", to give the High Street "the beauty treatment and get rid of its clutter, like overhead wires and confusion of road signs".

But the clutter included the Victorian town hall, which appears to have been on the verge of being demolished. "Mr Hill likened the town hall to an hour glass in which the sand had run to one end, thus holding up commercial expansion towards the north end of the town," said the paper.

None of these plans came to pass – the town hall survived, the regional city was rejected and the 2011 census found that the population of Northallerton was only 16,832.