THE hunt for robbers who terrorised a Swindon bank manager and his family was a major ongoing story this week in 1970.

Two men wearing stocking masks broke into the family’s flat above the National Westminster Bank in Wood Street.

The manager, his wife and a 15-year-old son were at home at the time, and one of the robbers pointed a shotgun at the woman’s neck before demanding keys to the safe.

They didn’t realise that two sets of keys were needed, and that the manager only had access to one.

Eventually the robbers fled empty-handed, locking the family – an older son had been ambushed after coming home and stumbling on the scene – in a 6ft by 4ft store room.

Their cries for help were eventually heard by passers-by.

“We were prodded with the guns,” said the 46-year-old bank manager. “They were threatening us and using bad language and one of them told me to hand over the keys.”

The robbery came during an era when many villains targeted banks and building societies away from cities, where there was less risk of being thwarted by CCTV, panic buttons and other security measures.

Another sign of the times, again involving the National Westminster Bank, appeared in the same edition of the Adver.

It had been nearly three years since actor and future On the Buses star Reg Varney opened Britain’s first cash machine at a Barclays branch in North London, but they were still very much seen as something from the impossibly exciting future.

They were certainly enough of a novelty for a new one at the Regent Street branch to have an advert all to itself. “National Westminster’s new Cash Dispensers,” said the text, “have become so popular that we’re now putting them in as fast as we can.

“It’s certainly nice to know there’s always £10 waiting for you whenever you need it day or night, seven days a week.

“You simply feed in your cash card, tap out your number, and it hands out the money without a murmur.”

Rather chillingly, the text concluded: “After all – who cares how impersonal it is, as long as it comes across with the money?”

A much less popular futuristic design was that of the town centre water feature known The Cube, which had been the subject of almost universal derision since its installation in 1966. It was in the news this week 48 years ago thanks to the ongoing throwing of litter into the large pool surrounding the abstract Geoffrey Wickham sculpture.

We said: “The pool has become one of The Parade’s most frequently used waste paper containers, and we have heard it suggested that shoppers stand and gaze at the surface of the pool in the hope of spotting some sign of water between the discarded lollipop wrappers and empty bags.“

The solution was to reduce the size of the pool, but as older Rewind readers will recall, this did little to help and the water feature was completely gone by the end of the decade.

One of the more printable letters we received from the public queried the cost of the alteration. Signed by 13 people, it concluded: “Surely it would be better to spend any available money on a crossing needed for children and elderly people than waste it on such a useless monstrosity.”

A much older water feature, together something else which may or may not have been one, came to light elsewhere in Swindon.

Workers renovating the premises of solicitors Kinneir and Co in High Street uncovered what at first seemed to be a pair of wells in the cellar, just six feet apart.

Then somebody noticed that although one was full of water the other – 25 feet deep - was bone dry.

Although carefully lined with stone in a way one would expect of a viable well, it had no water marks and not so much as hint of damp.

Most people who saw the shafts wondered whether the dry one was a dummy used for storing contraband centuries earlier, when smuggling was rife in Old Town.

Also in the news was a young Swindon soldier whose schedule left him with an unexpected three months of spare time as he waited to begin extra training.

He decided to spend some of it seeing much of the nation – by walking from one end of it to the other.

In an Easter Saturday story we said: “Most people were able to relax yesterday but Pte David Ponting, 19, spent the day on a 15-mile walk.

“His reward was a pair of aching feet to soothe after the journey.

“But for David, whose home is at Nindum Road, Stratton St Margaret, the day’s trip was only part of a 900-mile marathon from John O’Groats to Land’s End.

“He is spending today at Ashchurch, giving his feet a short rest before starting out again tomorrow morning.”

The soldier was partly inspired by a young man with artificial legs who had recently completed the trek.