On this week in Crimplesham, Harpley, Hunstanton, King’s Lynn, Northwold and Wereham: October 13-19, 1994

In our weekly feature we look through the pages of the Lynn News from 1994 and 2005…

An unholy row has broken out over the ordination of women priests in the village of Northwold. Church treasurer Jim Booty has resigned from the parochial church council after it voted that it would not have a female priest in the village. But his anger is not due to any fundamental religious beliefs – just the fact that two years ago the PCC voted to accept woman priests. Dr Jim Norris, secretary of the PCC, was personally in favour of women priests but accepted the vote, adding: “We don’t mind visiting women priests celebrating communion, but the vote of the PCC was that we didn’t want a permanent woman priest here. Not in our back yard, if you like.”

Lynn’s multi-million pound power station lifted off this week when the first turf was dug. Dr James Smith, chairman of the Eastern Group which includes Eastern Electricity, did the honours to launch the £160 million scheme. When it opens in December 1996, the station will be capable of generating 340 megawatts of electricity – enough to heat and light five towns the size of Lynn. The gas-fired power station is expected to create 300 jobs, most of them for local people, while it is built by Siemens over the next two years.

An up-to-the-minute house cost survey shows that West Norfolk is bucking the national trend with a steady increase in prices. Halifax Building Society’s figures show that the average price of property at Lynn over the last three months was £57,250, compared with £50,550 for the previous quarter. A breakdown of prices at Lynn shows the average price of a semi-detached house at £46,200 (£39,950 in the previous quarter), a terraced house at £37,250 (£32,150) and a detached house at £86,450 (£72,250). Bungalows came in at £57,250.

Lynn’s historic buildings are to be the focus of a unique magical light display over Hallowe’en. Various town centre buildings will be swathed in coloured light and video projections in the striking display, which runs every night from Monday, October 31, for a week. It will be the first time such a huge programme of illumination and projected imagery has taken place in Britain outside London and Edinburgh. The Lightworks project is an artistic scheme to dramatically illuminate the town’s architecture and history.

A Royal Navy Sea King helicopter landed at Hunstanton’s Smithdon High School and took some pupils for a ride. The helicopter arrived at the school after a presentation about life in the Royal Navy. While the majority of the school was able to get into the helicopter only senior pupils aged 18 and over could go up in it.

Determined parents in Wereham and Crimplesham have forced a change of heart with school bus planners. Last month the Lynn News reported that angry parents had boycotted the school bus run after Norfolk County Council withdrew the service to Hillcrest Primary School. The change meant the youngsters would have to travel on the same bus as high school pupils up to the age of 18 and would have to wait for 25 minutes at the end of the school day because of different start and finish times. But now the younger pupils will be ferried home straight from school and the bus returning to pick up the high school pupils.

The number of jobless adults in West Norfolk has dropped for the eighth month running, but prospects are not so bright for teenagers. Jobcentre figures for September reveal that there were 4,450 out of work, compared with 4,553 in August, making it the biggest month-on-month drop this year. The centre, in St Nicholas Street, Lynn, handled 422 vacancies in September which was the highest monthly total so far this year.

Higher fuel costs are inevitable in the coming fight to save energy and the environment. That is the warning from West Norfolk Mayor, Mr Bryan Howling, ahead of next week’s Energy Action 2000 conference at Barnham Broom near Norwich. The conference, partly sponsored by West Norfolk Council, has been organised by the Norfolk Energy Forum in the wake of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. After the summit, most developed countries agreed to reduce “greenhouse” gases like carbon dioxide.