A ROW of shiny new houses with their own private lake – surely potential occupants would be queuing to snap one up?

Not in Toothill this week in 1978, they weren’t.

The problem with the lake, which was about 45 yards long, 10 yards across and a yard deep in places, was that it wasn’t supposed to be there.

We wrote: “Most of a row of £15,000 houses are standing empty – because Thamesdown Borough Council tried to make them more habitable!

“What started as a kind move has backfired and turned into a cruel one.

“The council erected an earth mound alongside the houses in Bodiam Drive to cut traffic noise from the busy A420 only yards away.

“But while the barrier has kept out the traffic noise, it’s been keeping in water.

“A ‘lake’ about 45 yards long has formed in the back gardens and turned the area into a bog.”

The site engineer for the new development of council houses, Des Rideout, said many families were refusing to move in. One person who did move in but regretted doing so was Shirley Gilbert.

“At one point the lake was almost up to our back door,” she said.

“It must be about three feet deep in places.”

The council said remedies were being investigated.

In other property news, a front page story a couple of days later began: “House prices in Thamesdown have gone through the roof during the past few months, it was revealed today.”

The figures we gave were eye-watering at the time, but they’d be more likely to prompt tears of nostalgia and yearning these days: “The cost of an ordinary three-bedroomed semi on a Swindon estate has rocketed from £11,000 to more than £13,000 in just four months, say estate agents.

“The crisis has been caused by a combination of things: a mass shortage of property, the influx of workers from outside the area and Government restrictions on mortgage lending.

“Some higher-priced property in the £20,000 and above range has gone up by as much as £4,000. Only the terraced houses have kept their feet on the ground. And only because there is enough property around.”

The week was also the one chosen for Swindon’s Cook of the Year competition organised by the Adver and South West Gas.

It was a good 15 or 20 years before cookery competitions became a major fixture on TV screens, but there were plenty of entrants whenever newspapers organised them.

The venue for 1978’s was the Wiltshire Hotel in the town centre, where a four-strong all-female shortlist gathered to impress a panel of judges including senior gas firm officials and a regional TV chef of the day called Toni Stoppani. The audience was 250-strong.

The field included Dianne Steele, a 37-year-old Highworth teacher, and her 33-year-old sister Margaret Charlton, of Devizes.

Dianne won, and her dishes were crown roast of pork and a dessert of coffee savarin Japonnaise.

We wrote: “And with the title went first prize of a de luxe New World Super Sola II gas cooker worth £224, a £10 voucher from the Oxford and Swindon Co-op and a bottle of champagne from the Wiltshire Hotel.”

She told us: “It’s a smashing feeling to have won.

“We need a new gas cooker. We’re hoping to move from Bute Close to Priory Green, Highworth, in July and it will be a welcome house-moving present.”

Two other siblings appearing in the newspaper were Steve and Jay Eden-Wynn. They were pictured together – Jay in a two-piece disco outfit and her brother in full boxing kit.

We explained: “Steve, 22, of Nindum Road, Stratton St Margaret, is through to the semi-finals of the Amateur Boxing Association’s nationwide championships.

“And Jay, 28, of Redcliffe Street, a regular dancer at The Affair [a nightclub in Theatre Square], has landed a plum role as lead go-go dancer in the Discomania adverts on television.”

If anybody can tell us what Discomania was, we’d be grateful.

We added: “This knockout family team are very close. Jay used to spar with Steve when he was younger, and she faithfully attends every fight to cheer Steve on.”

The Affair was also in the news for hosting all-woman punk band The Slits that week. They’ve since become icons of the ‘Do It Yourself’ ethos of original punk, but they failed to impress our reviewer, who wrote: “To be fair they were playing to a backdrop of continual kicking and shoving between bouncers and boppers.

“But nevertheless The Slits were dire.”

Also in town was another emerging act, Tom Robinson, who used a Brunel Rooms gig as an anti-fascist platform.

This time our reviewer was more impressed: “You can bop to Robinson as well as raise an angry fist to the racists.”

MONDAY, MARCH 20, 1978: “ANDREW Lee, Thamesdown’s Community Relations Officer, is leaving Swindon for a new job in Birmingham. And he will go during a bitter political storm, for members of the Community Relations Council today attacked their own vice-chairman, Coun Eric Hodges, who has accused the council of leanings to the far left. Coun Hodges today repeated his allegations that the executive was being taken over by communists. Coun Hodges has also suggested that the ‘far left’ executive want to appoint a new community relations officer with ‘far left’ views.”

TUESDAY, MARCH 21, 1978: “SWINDON Robins speedway riders staged a walkout at Reading last night because they considered the track too wet and dangerous. Today it seemed clear they would get full backing from the club, for general manager Ted Nelson said: ‘I cannot give my personal opinion of the track because I was not there, but I have no cause to doubt the integrity of my riders. If I needed further evidence before giving my riders full backing, it would be that independent rider Malcolm Simmons also refused to ride.’”

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22, 1978: “THE big immigration row is now set to explode in Swindon after a controversial speech by the town’s Tory hopeful Mr Nigel Hammond. The prospective Parliamentary candidate called for ‘an end to immigration as we know it’ and hit back at left wing opposition to tighter immigration control. He told the town’s Conservatives: ‘Margaret Thatcher and Willie Whitelaw have been right in spelling out this Tory message to Britain.’”

THURSDAY, MARCH 23, 1978: “A NATIONAL ‘porn mag charter’ has been announced as Thamesdown’s politicians and newsagents plan special talks on the sale of sex magazines. Newsagents in the Swindon area are to meet the politicians next month. And on Tuesday a magazine dealers’ group laid down guidelines aimed to avoid trouble with the police over girlie books. Swindon’s prospective Tory candidate, Nigel Hammond, has welcomed the plan.”

SATURDAY, MARCH 25, 1978: “A SCARE over suspect cans of corned beef has sent Thamesdown public health officials on a hunt to track them down. The subject of the nationwide hunt is a batch of 6lb tins of Brazilian corned beef – they are embossed with the words ‘establishment 10’ and the code 8778F. Corned beef from the batch has already caused some cases of food poisoning, leading to the alert. A spokesman for Thamesdown Council said public health officials have been contacting likely outlets for the suspect corned beef.”