BLACK-OUT TO END

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 87, 27 January 1947, Page 8

BLACK-OUT TO END

ONE THOUSAND-YEAR RESTRICTION Fiore, Northamptonshire village of 750 people, has decided to lift the black-out that has laid on its streets for 1000 years. The parish, with its High-street forming part of the main DaventryNorthampton road, its earl}' English church and old cottages, was flirting with the idea of street lighting well back in the last century. But modern ideas are slow to gain a hold in a community which, under the title of Flora, was well established" alongside the magnificent old church when the Domesday Book surveyors called round in 1085. If it had not been for the impact of modern industry, in the shape of a small thatched-roof factoi’y for making electric kettles, Flore might still not have made up its mind about introducing street lighting. Men ; and women woi'kers at the factory, many of them with war service, pressed for a full-scale parish meeting. The villagers were reminded that the grid system had brought electricity within their reach. Now was the time for the parish council to move. And the conveners of the meeting, won the day. The parish council agreed that their demand for lamps in the street was a reasonable one. Mr F. Brodie Lodge, member of the council,’local landowner and occupier of old Flore House, a country mansion bult in 1602, said that the parish council would certainly implement the decision of the village meeting. “If we walk out after dark now,” he said, “we light our way with electric torches. Street lighting will be a great improvement. “It is true that electrical kettles are being made in Flore, but we have no desire to see the village turned into a kind of industrial suburb. “Although water and electricity are available, there are still cottages which rely on a well for water and on lamps for light.”