SWINDON risked ending up deep in something unmentionable this week in 1970.

We said: “The shut-down of the Swindon sewage works by the strike of council workers is now causing serious concern to Thames Conservancy officials as partially treated sewage reaches the river.

“Their major worry is the quality of water taken from the Thames at Buscot and Oxford for the public supply.

“If the situation continues to deteriorate, the water intakes may have to be closed down.”

Like countless other public employees, sewage plant staff were in a militant mood over an ongoing pay dispute.

If the situation was worrying for human beings, it was even more serious for life forms obliged to live in the Thames:

“As fish are dying in their thousands in the Rivers Ray and Thames, local fishing clubs say they will be claiming compensation from Swindon Corporation.

“Mr Brian Austin of the Haydon Street Working Men’s Club Angling Society said he was concerned and bitter about all the fish dying.

“Hundreds of barbell, chub, bream, face and trout were dying around Hannington Wick.”

Six years earlier, following another pollution incident, local angling clubs had shared a £10,000 settlement from the corporation.

We added: “Five thousand pounds of this was spent earlier this year, restocking a stretch of the Thames with 3,000 roach, 1,000 bream and 1,000 brown trout.“

Mr Austin feared many of those recent additions would be among the casualties of the latest pollution.

School pupils were a rather cheerier about the ongoing industrial strife, as 16,000 of them had the Friday off thanks to 50 schools being closed.

By that time members of the public were volunteering to staff the sewage works, and burials were being held up because of a stoppage among gravediggers.

In a complete change of tone, another of our front page stories that week involved a beauty queen who competed under a false name.

She had good reason to do so:

“An RAF flying officer at Lyneham said today that she entered beauty contests under a false name and address because she ‘did not want to bring the service into disrepute.’

“’Sue Paton of Bath Road, Wootton Bassett,’ runner-up in the Miss Swindon competition at Swindon Expo and second in the Miss HTV contest at Weston-super-Mare last night, was Flying Officer Sue Bowater of RAF Lyneham.

“But she denied today that her resignation from the RAF on Thursday had anything to do with objections to her entering beauty contests.”

She told us: “I am getting married at Ventnor next Saturday; my husband, who is also serving in the RAF at Lyneham, is being posted to Cyprus and I want to go with him. That’s all there is to it.”

In spite of that, the former flying officer admitted to using her stepfather’s surname to avoid bringing the RAF into any disrepute. She refused to say whether her bosses had been unhappy when they found out.

Also successful in a competition was Norman Passant, who attended the Civic Offices to receive a trophy for the best poem written by a person living within a 20-mile radius of Swindon.

Called the Ibberson-Jones Award, it was founded by Mrs EJ Jones – who presented the trophy – in memory of her late husband.

Mr Passant’s work frequently reflected his love of nature, but his winning poem was a dark metaphorical meditation on irrational prejudice.

Called His Creature, it began: “This man has a lion; fit for cage,/And garden, wild for any owner’s pride,/Ready to roar with rich suburban rage,/Its silence is a jungle magnified.”

The poet said: “It is about the misunderstandings that grow, and prejudices that grow sometimes, and the hatreds that grow in our lives and seem to take on a being of their own, so that we are afraid of them, but also afraid to let them go.”

Also in the news for pondering something deep and dark was a bulldozer driver called Nigel Wheeler. This week 47 years ago he became the latest – but by no means the last – person in his profession to uncover a well while working in Old Town.

Similar wells were uncovered over a period of years during the extensive redevelopment of the area, and rumours of a network of tunnels running deep beneath the surface of the hill still persist.

Mr Wheeler’s find came during work at Skurray’s in Newport Street, a site now occupied by the Co-op.

The shaft was lined with Cotswold stone and covered with a large slate slab.

Although some of the wells found in the area were thought to date from the Roman occupation, Skurray’s service manager Mr WS Priest suspected the one found by Mr Wheeler was more recent.

The site, he explained, had previously been occupied by a stabling yard, and the well might have been dug to supply water for the horses.