9 Hartlepool events from 1972 - the year this town nurse began on the NHS front line

Let’s pay tribute to this frontline worker from Hartlepool with a look back to 9 stories which made the headlines in 1972, the year she started in healthcare.

As Sue begins her retirement, here’s a reminder of helter skelters, the end of a Hartlepool housing era and the organ shop you all loved.

Chris Cordner reports.

Astroslide, the brand new helter skelter, became the latest addition to the seafront at Seaton Carew in 1972.

The Hartlepool Mail reporter at the time said: "The exotically named Astroslide is the 1972 version of the helter skelter and a more mature version of the slide in the children’s playground.”

Did you go on it? Which other seaside attractions of the past did you love?

A music shop was offering Hartlepool people the chance to ‘swing and sing’.

The Ray Moore Organ Centre, in York Road, was the place to go if you wanted to book organ demonstrations in your own home, buy organs from the shop or part exchange your own one.

And it was not just organs you could buy from this musical paradise. Also on offer were guitars from £6.75, school recorders, and harmonicas.

The first 60 beds of Hartlepool’s new district General Hospital were ready to be occupied.

Wards five and six on the third floor of the £1million phase were set to be operational.

The first phase would eventually house 254 beds divided into four main groups which were 120 medical, 60 geriatric, 48 psychiatric and 26 medical paediatric.

Workmen made a grisly discovery when they were converting a house on the Headland and uncovered a skeleton.

But a quick inspection by Hartlepool’s museum curator Frank Hackett revealed they had uncovered the last mortal remains of a small horse, probably from the 18th Century.

180 houses off Middleton Road, one of Hartlepool’s improvement areas, were being demolished.

Once the land has been cleared Hartlepool Corporation plans to rebuild the site as a residential area.

An estimated 40,000 milk bottles were not returned to one of Hartlepool’s largest milk distributors, the North-Eastern Co-operative Society, in 1972.

From 400 gross of milk bottles brought into use in the town just before Christmas, only a small percentage has been returned. The bottles cost more than £3 a gross.

500 jobs went on offer at Graythorp and more than 700 would-be workers applied for them.

Laing Pipelines (Offshore) - the Anglo-French partnership which was to build Hartlepool’s first oil-drilling platform - took applications from welders, erectors, and scaffolders.

Whippet racing made a return to popularity in Blackhall 50 years ago.

A donation of £30 by the Welfare helped the Blackhall CW Whippet Club off the ground.

A new-look 370-seat Ritz cinema was revealed for Horden. New curtains, a redecorated box office and new frontage were all part of the investment in the cinema in Sunderland Road which totalled £15,000.

What do you remember of life in Hartlepool in 1972? Tell us more by emailing [email protected]