Wooler Post office that inspired Postman Pat could be saved
A post office that was part of the inspiration for the Postman Pat stories could be saved from closure after a community organisation raised enough money to buy it.Greendale, the village where Pat delivers his mail, is based on Longsleddale in Cumbria but author John Cunliffe ran the Wooler mobile library service in Northumberland and said it also inspired the tales. The retirement of the current postmaster, who owns the building, prompted concerns the town would lose the post office. However, the Glendale Gateway Trust, which said the facility was "vital" to the town, said it had had an offer accepted for the building raising hopes it will stay open.
The Northumberland market town is in the valley of Glendale and has been linked to the Greendale in the fictional postman series.In an interview before he died, the author said Greendale was both Cumbria and Northumberland.Chief executive of the Glendale Community Trust Karen Froggatt said the money for the post office had come from "lots of different organisations"."People from the community have also donated because it is just so vital to the town," she said. "It is crucial for local businesses, but it's also a place where if someone doesn't turn up for a few days, that sets off alarm bells."
The building also has a two-bedroom flat which will be let to a local family. "It needs refurbishment but once that's done we can offer it to someone on our waiting list because there is a desperate shortage of affordable housing," Ms Froggatt said. "It's in the hands of solicitors, but all being well we're looking at mid-March for the new postmaster to take over and the flat should be available later in the year," she added.
Follow BBC North East on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram. Send your story ideas here.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
a day ago
- BBC News
Wooler post office with links to Postman Pat saved from closure
A post office in a town which helped inspire the Postman Pat stories has been saved from author John Cunliffe drew on his time running the mobile library service in Wooler in Northumberland's Glendale valley, and based fictional Greendale on both the village and Longsleddale in post office in Wooler was put up for sale along with an upstairs flat last September due to the retirement of the now the Glendale Gateway Trust has stepped in to purchase them both. When the building was put up for sale, councillor Mark Mather, who represents Wooler on the county council, described it as "a real irony" that an area which helped create a famous postman was facing a future without a post the news it had been saved, he said: "It's really positive for the community."It was a huge challenge to make this happen."It just shows that when the community pulls together, anything is possible. This is an important local service run by local people."It's not just about Wooler, it's about the whole area. It is an absolutely vital service." Funding from local residents, nearby Barnmoor Windfarm and Wooler Parish Council allowed the trust to purchase the post office, the Local Democracy Reporting Service flat will be made available for rent at an affordable rate thanks to a separate £100,000 grant from Northumberland County is popular with tourists thanks to its proximity to Northumberland's highest mountain, The Cheviot. Follow BBC North East on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram.
Daily Mirror
05-06-2025
- Daily Mirror
Mum in horror sewage flood with 'hundreds of condoms' gives chilling warning
When Mary Long-Dhonau's home was overwhelmed by sewage, rats and dried faeces, she vowed no-one else should go through the same hell When Mary Long-Dhonau's home was overwhelmed by sewage in the great floods of 2000, her three-year-old son had just been diagnosed with autism. "He lost his toys, his playroom," Mary, 61, a former professional soprano, says. "I lost boxes of my children's memories, hospital memorabilia, little handprints, the first drawing of Postman Pat. "I had planned on wrapping them all with a big red ribbon and giving it to them when they turned 18. But everything got flooded and dumped into a skip." Her 11-year-old son's bedroom was deluged with drain water. "I had to get the fire service to pump us out." Mary didn't live on an official floodplain. The worst of the flooding had come from a local sewage works swamped as the River Severn overflowed. "Outside my gate, I had more condoms than I have ever seen in my life," Mary says, "We were joking, at least we practice safe sex in Worcester – but it was hundreds and hundreds of them. "It took nine months to put our house back together. I remember walking the streets on cold evenings because my son couldn't tolerate the building noise. It was miserable. It is just tragic having your house annihilated by filthy stenching flood water." 25 years on, with her wellies firmly on, the mother-of-five from Worcester is better known as 'Flood Mary' – after dedicating herself to fighting floods. Mary was awarded an OBE for services to the environment in the Queen's Birthday Honours list in 2009. She has met with thousands of flood victims, teaches communities to prepare and recover from flooding, and even has her own 'Floodmobile' – a house on wheels packed with flood resilience ideas and products. As rain falls across the country following the driest spring in more than 50 years, Mary has an urgent message for government ahead of next Wednesday's Spending Review. "To my absolute horror, I've learned of proposed cuts to the flood defence budget," she says. "I can't begin to describe how deeply worrying this is, not just to me, but to the thousands of people across the country who live with the daily reality of flood risk." A fortnight ago, Mary gave evidence at the Environmental Audit Select Committee at Parliament, where she gave an emotive speech on behalf of flood victims. "I have spoken to more than two thousand flooded and traumatised people – some have been flooded twice in the same year," she says now. "Imagine how you'd feel if your home had been violated by filthy, stinking floodwater, which ruined everything you'd worked so hard for, washing away your treasured memories. "Even once you return, every time it rains, the fear floods back. And now, you're told the government is considering cutting the funding, which could help reduce the risk of it happening again." The Department for Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) says the Labour government is investing record sums on flood defences. "Our sympathies are with all those affected by flooding," a spokesman said. "This government inherited flood defences in their worst condition on record. Through our Plan for Change, we're investing a record £2.65 billion over two years to repair and build more than 1,000 flood defences across the country, protecting tens of thousands of homes and businesses." With five million people in England and Wales living in flood risk areas – and people more likely to have their homes flooded than burgled thanks to the changing climate – Mary says she remains worried. She points to recent concerns about cuts aired by Baroness Brown, a member of the independent Climate Change Committee. When we caught up with the campaigner at a Flood Mary workshop in Leicester, where she was helping flooded residents, she told us what she remembers even more than the rats and dried faeces left behind when the sewage subsided, is that she felt completely alone. "When I got flooded, the only information I got was a leaflet on washing my hands if I came in to contact with flood water. I decided to do something about that." Roy Frisby, 56, tells Mary: "When we got the flood alert at 2am, I ran out and started knocking on all the neighbours' doors to alert them,' says. 'The water came so fast. My living room was like a swimming pool. "My insurance placed me in a hotel from January to December 2024. I moved back home on the 20th December only to then be flooded again on January 6 this year – and I'm back in the hotel again. "My brand-new kitchen that cost £14,500 is destroyed and has been dumped outside the house. My sofa and carpets, everything is gone." Dawn Eato, 67, says Roy was a hero for alerting his neighbours. "We received flood alerts the second time, so we knew it was coming and we moved a lot of stuff upstairs,' she says. 'But we lost electronic items and furniture the first time. I'm retired, and didn't have insurance." Council worker Chinonye Ndukwe, 50, tells Mary: "I live near the river, and we were flooded twice. The water just came in through the doors, it was knee high. It was so bad in 2024, three sofas, a fridge and a cupboard were lost, and my carpets were ruined." Lesley Edwards, 64, is there on behalf of her 85-year-old mother. "My mum has lived in her house for 64 years and 2024 was the first time she was flooded – she had to be rescued,' she says. 'She had recently had new furniture but lost it with her washing machine, white goods and carpets. She is living with me until we get her home repaired." These people's heartbreak is what keeps Mary on the road in her Floodmobile. "I don't want people to go through what I went through," she says. "I want to talk about how to plan for a flood, waterproofing your home, having plastic boxes to put your house contents in if you get flooded. "I say to people, go into your living room and move anything below waist level. You can replace your sofa, or your washing machine with insurance, but you can't replace sentimental things. Get memories out of harm's way." The flooding that destroyed Mary's property in the early winter of 2000 was the worst since 1947. 10,000 homes and businesses were flooded at 700 locations. Since then, climate change, population changes, and loss of green space has added further to flood risk, according to the Environment Agency. "Thanks to climate change, flooding is only going to get worse," Mary says. "Each flood means more damaged homes, broken infrastructure, ruined crops, and spiralling costs of repairs and damages. Entire communities can be left behind economically as they struggle to recover. "The very idea of cutting the flood defence budget is preposterous. To follow through with it would be not only reckless but heartless." And with that Mary is off in her Floodmobile to the next place to teach more people about how to keep safe and recover from flooding. "People call me a one-woman army," she says.
South Wales Guardian
03-06-2025
- South Wales Guardian
Senior Met officer sacked for second time over refusing drugs test
Commander Julian Bennett was initially dismissed by a misconduct panel in October 2023 over the incident, but took his case to the Police Appeals Tribunal (PAT) in July last year and had his sacking overturned. He was found to have committed gross misconduct by failing to provide a urine sample for a drugs test on July 21 2020, which led to his suspension shortly afterwards. A panel found he had breached professional standards when he refused to provide the sample after being called in to do so in the presence of an assistant commissioner, instead offering to resign on the spot and asking for a meeting with then-commissioner Dame Cressida Dick. Following the PAT's decision to revoke the dismissal, the Met considered a legal challenge by way of a Judicial Review but decided that Mr Bennett should face a fresh misconduct hearing last September. The allegation proven against Mr Bennett was again found at the level of gross misconduct at the latest hearing. The officer, who served in the force from 1976, had remained suspended throughout the process and will now be added to the College of Policing's barred list. Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist said: 'I am enormously concerned that almost five years since this incident happened we have only now been able to dismiss Commander Bennett. 'This should have been a simple matter. Commander Bennett has never disputed he refused a lawful order to take a drugs test. 'As a senior officer who had chaired misconduct hearings, Commander Bennett was highly experienced and knew full well what was required of him, yet he made a choice not to co-operate. 'He has been suspended on full pay for an extraordinary length of time. I am sure Londoners will be as outraged as we are at the utter waste of public funds spent paying a senior officer to sit at home suspended and not work.' Mr Twist said that 'while the Met is not responsible for all the delays in Commander Bennett's matter, we are also working hard to expedite cases and cut bureaucracy', adding: 'I am confident a situation like Commander Bennett's prolonged case would not happen again.' Mr Bennett wrote the Met's drugs strategy for 2017-21 as a commander for territorial policing. The document, called Dealing With The Impact Of Drugs On Communities, set up plans to raise 'awareness of the impact of drug misuse'. He chaired misconduct panels over several years and freedom of information requests showed he presided over 74 misconduct hearings involving 90 officers between June 2010 and February 2012, leading to 56 officers being dismissed.
