THIS week in 1976 it was hot.

In fact, it was more than hot: we were in the early stages of what would become the greatest heatwave of the era.

By the time it ended in September scarcely a lawn, a shrub or a square inch of habitually exposed skin would be anything other than brown.

The greenest things to be seen in most English gardens were the plagues of aphids, whose population exploded in the blistering conditions. In some parts of the country this led to a corresponding plague of ladybirds.

Every day newspapers tried to find ways of telling people it was hot without repeating themselves, and the Adver was no exception.

One day, for example, we ran a feature about Swindon’s potential as a holiday resort, which was being pondered by the old Thamesdown Council’s publicity department. The biggest photograph was of a bikini-clad woman called Brenda Wozencroft, captured as she sunbathed in a deckchair in Prospect Hill.

The launch in Queen’s Park of a Thames Water Authority campaign to conserve the scarce resource was our cue for another shot of a glamorous model, as Deirdre Barnes posed by a pond with a poster.

With temperatures hitting 32C (89.6F), we reported: “The number of people who have collapsed in Swindon has trebled since the heatwave began.

“Swindon Ambulance Service were called to nine cases of people collapsing over the weekend – that’s three times as many as they would expect.”

As if heatstroke weren’t enough of a hazard, firefighters were called to grassfires near the M4, at a cycle track near the Oasis and in various other locations.

We added: “A spokesman at Swindon fire station warned picnickers not to throw cigarette ends into the dry grass or leave bits of broken glass which could attract the sun’s rays.”

On the last day of June we reported a ‘sit out’ at the Richard Jefferies School, which was on the site of what is now housing near New College.

“They drew up a petition with signatures covering five sheets of a school exercise book and presented it to headmaster Mr Dennis Hoyland,” we revealed.

“The petition said: ‘It’s too hot to work’.”

Mr Hoyland sympathised, but said there was little he could do but draw blinds against the sun.

The wilting wasn’t just confined to plants and people. Shop manageress Margaret Titcombe, of Brett and Sons in Drove Road, told us: “Our chocolate is running away. We’re out of butter, too. That just melted away. And I’ve had to stop buying cream cakes because the cream was running out of them.”

Remarkably, we found space to report other news, such as a pioneering woman Grand Prix driver taking on Concorde – and winning.

To this day Divina Galica, born in 1944, remains one of only five women to have competed in Formula One, and had previously competed in three Winter Olympics as a skier, including twice as leader of the women’s team.

We wrote: “Concorde was put in the shade at RAF Fairford today as speed girl Divina Galica whistled her Formula One Grand prix racing car up and down the aircraft’s runway, smashing record after record.

“Divina, who lives at Malmesbury, clocked her way into record books on at least four counts.”

These included beating various historic distance records and becoming the fastest woman in Britain on four wheels, with a speed of 171.02mph.

Her back-up team included former world champion John Surtees.

A record of another kind was being attempted 200ft up on the 11th floor of the Hambro Life building in Swindon’s Station Road.

More than 100 women took part in the highest sponsored knit, organised by the Church of England Children’s Society.

Organiser John Philpott said: “Nothing like this has ever been held before, so we should be in with a pretty good chance.”

Car workers at the Leyland plant were given a chance to get a close look at the new Rover 3500, the luxury car they’d helped to build.

We noted: “At a shilling or two under £5,000 it is a car that few of the men who make it will be buying – new at least. But that didn’t stop them admiring it.”

As things turned out, those who didn’t buy probably had a lucky escape. The 3500 was a fast, luxurious and rather beautiful car, but few remain on the roads today as they tended to crumble into heaps of rust.

In other news...

MONDAY, JUNE 28, 1976: “A 14-year-old Stratton St Margaret boy was today recovering at home after a dramatic holiday cliff rescue. Robert Stanley, of Bourton Avenue, was found by rescuers on a cliff ledge near Dartmouth, Devon. On Friday he was reported missing by his parents. They were all staying at a Brixham holiday camp. On Saturday evening coastguards received a report from a passing boat that a boy answering Robert’s description was in trouble about 50ft up a 150ft cliff at Newfoundland Cove. Rescuers hacked their way through dense undergrowth to reach the clifftop above the boy. They reached him by abseiling down the cliff face and found him in a clump of bushes with only minor injuries.”

TUESDAY, JUNE 29, 1976: “ANOTHER man suffering from an apparent loss of memory has turned up in Swindon. He walked into the police station on Saturday afternoon and said he couldn’t remember his name or address. He is the second man in a month claiming to have lost his memory. A few weeks back an elderly man was found wandering round the Brunel Plaza, but his identity was later discovered by police. The latest Mr X told officers he could remember waking up in Queen’s Park, Swindon, at about two o’clock on Saturday afternoon.”

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 30, 1976: “FISHING has been banned at Coate Water, Swindon. The disease which is killing off the stock of fish at the rate of 150 to 200 a day has been identified by the Thames Water Authority as columnaris, a bacterial infection likely to occur when the water temperature is exceptionally high.”

THURSDAY, JULY 1, 1976: “THE first family to buy a house at Toothill – Swindon’s massive Western expansion area – moved in yesterday. Braving the building work going on around, Mr Robert Tidey and his wife, Christina, along with their two sons, moved into their £8,950 semi-detached two-bedroomed house. Theirs is the first house to be occupied in Colchester Close, Toothill, which is being developed by the Devizes building firm of F Rendell and Sons. ‘We hope it will be alright here,’ said Mrs Tidey, who was still in the curtain-making and carpet-laying stage of moving home.”

FRIDAY, JULY 2, 1976: “A PUPIL of Vaughan Williams, the 80-year-old Jasper Rooper, came to the performance of his recent opera Kezia and the Kelveys, performed by pupils at Dorcan School last night. Based on Catherine Mansfield’s short story, The Doll’s House, with a libretto by Margaret Thomas, it’s set in the early 1900s. It is about a little rich girl who defies parents, sisters and schoolmates to befriend two girls from a poor family who are taunted and bullied at school. The school orchestra is conducted by music master Adrian Knott and the producer is Homer Tull.”