100 years ago: April 1908 Hampstead Town Hall was the scene of a bright and happy gathering, as 130 girls from the Catholic Orphanage in Haverstock Hill and 130 boys from the Field Lane Industrial School and Home in West Hampstead came to tea and enterta

100 years ago: April 1908

Hampstead Town Hall was the scene of a bright and happy gathering, as 130 girls from the Catholic Orphanage in Haverstock Hill and 130 boys from the Field Lane Industrial School and Home in West Hampstead came to tea and entertainment. A bountiful tea was heartily enjoyed, as the Mayor and Mayoress strolled among them chatting pleasantly.

A public meeting considers the proposed Licensing Bill. The chairman said they were met in a great crisis in the history of the country, in conditions of moral and national seriousness with regard to the gigantic evil of intemperance, with public houses being the centres of disease, immorality and crime. Under the Bill the number of licensed houses would be reduced by about one third within 14 years. A resolution urges that no effort be spared to ensure it becomes law.

There are complaints about the use of barbed wire on Hampstead Heath. Slopes on either side of the cycle track above the bathing pond are fenced in with this dangerous material. It is suggested that the whole matter be taken up by the Hampstead Heath Protection Society.

We are pleased to state that Alderman Gurney Randall, who broke the small bone of his right leg while going downstairs in his new home in Parkhill Road, Hampstead, is progressing favourably towards recovery.

50 years ago: April 1958

Thirty-six Hampstead skiffle and jazz musicians are banding together to provide entertainment for the anti H-bomb marchers to Aldermaston over the Easter weekend. They will accompany 50 Hampstead members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament who are also going on the four-day march.

At the annual meeting of Christ Church, Hampstead, a parishioner rebukes the vicar for ending Sunday morning children's services without consultation. The vicar retorts that he held two meetings to discuss it - about six people attended the first time and even fewer the second.

A correspondent writes of the appalling service by bus crews on the No. 31 route, which runs along Adelaide Road. He says drivers seem to take a delight in accelerating and decelerating as violently as possible. A signal to stop often results in the vehicle merely slowing down to a fast walking pace, so passengers have to jump for it as best they can. And it seems to be the general practice for the conductor to ring the bell before the last passenger is aboard.

A Hampstead couple who emigrated to Western Canada have returned after a year, complaining of high unemployment over there, a high cost of living and high medical charges. He said: "We've come to realise now that there is no place in the world as good as dear old Blighty."

Finchley Council agrees to allow the shooting of pigeons in Big Wood, Hampstead Garden Suburb, after complaints that the pigeons are damaging crops at the Temple Fortune allotments.

25 years ago: 31 March 1983

Hundreds of Manchester United football fans ran riot and looted shops in Swiss Cottage. The youths ran amok in McDonald's restaurant, raided a sports shop, smashed the windows of a jeweller's and grabbed up to £40,000 of goods. A witness said he did not see a single policeman throughout the disturbance, with the rioting fans numbering between 200 and 300.

Marchers carry a large wooden cross through the streets of Hampstead from Hampstead Parish Church in Church Row to Parliament Hill, where the cross will stay throughout Easter week.

Opponents of the felling of ancient trees along the edge of Highgate Wood say their views are being ignored by "high-handed and arrogant" City of London officials. The Corporation says the trees, mostly oaks, pose a danger to motor and pedestrian traffic on Muswell Hill Road.

Courts must pass deterrent sentences to halt the growing trend for youths to carry knives and use them, says an Old Bailey judge, as he jails a Cricklewood 17-year-old for four years for manslaughter.

Camden is seeking to have Selous Street in Camden Town renamed in honour of the jailed South African political prisoner Nelson Mandela. One councillor on the planning committee said Selous, who led Cecil Rhodes from the Transvaal into what became Rhodesia in the 1890s, had done more for humanity than Mandela has. Another said that Rhodes was a white supremacist, while Mandela is fighting against black racism and white racism.

10 years ago: 3 April 1998

Barnet Council is to purchase the buildings owned by the Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute since 1909, ending a five-year dispute. The institute had served notice to quit on the Henrietta Barnett School, demanding rent, which the school had never paid in its 80-year history.

Hampstead Theatre is to get Lottery funding for a new building in Swiss Cottage - but for only one auditorium with not much more than the current theatre's 174 seats.

Warren Mitchell, the actor who played Alf Garnett, has won a major offensive to turn down the volume at Kenwood's classical music concerts, with a ban on all percussive fireworks, shorter rehearsal times and a limit on noise levels. Mr Mitchell railed against the "disco mentality" at Kenwood, English Heritage philistinism and vulgar stunts such as fireworks. He said "It seems to me that English Heritage is determined to make Kenwood into a Disney-like attraction."

A balding bespectacled 45-year-old man was a model London Transport employee at Camden Town and Chalk Farm Underground stations, voted "Tube man of the year" in the 1980s. But he hid a dark secret, an Old Bailey court heard, because on his rest days he turned into an armed robber. He was recruited by his brother-in-law for a series of hold-ups in London, which netted money and jewellery valued at £1.5 million. Finally the strain became too much and he became an informer.

o Because of a shortage of social housing, Camden families applying for a council home could soon be urged to "look elsewhere" in the UK rather than join 14,000 others in the borough's housing queue.

Compiled by Anne Rowe