Yesterday a post was asking for information on Hethersett Railway Station. So I am delighted to be able to reproduce the article and photographs in this blog and hope it is of interest. If you want to see the original article it was in the May 2016 edition of Hethersett Herald which can be accessed by clicking on this link and going to page nine:
https://hethersettherald.weebly.com/uploads/1/1/9/3/11930148/village_mag_may_2016_3_.pdf
HETHERSETT Railway Station was built in 1845 and in the 1960s as many as 12 trains a day in each direction stopped there.
Hethersett was on the Great Eastern Railway main line between Norwich and Thetford/Ely. In the 1960s the majority of trains stopping there were part of the Norwich to King’s Lynn/Wells Next the Sea service.
The station was almost 2 km from the main part of the village, down what is now Station Lane which is divided by the main A11. In 1966, the station was considered to be surplus to requirements and was closed. The platforms were removed.
For a time the station buildings were used as part of a tyre store. Subsequently the station building was left derelict and photographs of its poor state are available on the internet and include one used here.
Another interesting part of the station’s history saw sidings put into place leading to a Ministry of Defence oil depot during the Second World War.
The photographs on this page show just some of the history of the station. There are more photographs with descriptions in the Hethersett Herald article.
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Yesterday I did my own very small tribute to Vera Lynn who has died at the age of 103. But I bet you didn't know that during the Second World War Vera Lynn was banned by the BBC.
Yes that's right the BBC, in their infinite wisdom and arrogance, decided that they knew better than the British people and decided Vera's music was too "slushy and sentimental" and her radio show should be replaced by something a little more uplifting.
From the 1930s, the BBC had a special committee set up to ban anything thought to be in the slightest bit subversive. But, when it came to music, this included music with religious content, music that contained advertising, music with overly sexual lyrics and music with political content. They even banned popular songs that had classical tunes with one of the first to suffer being "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" because it took its music from Chopin.
Some of those who had their music banned were squeaky clean singers like Frank Sinatra, Petula Clark, Perry Como and Ken Dodd and even Cliff Richard.
Amazingly the BBC banned a piece of music by its own dance band. In 1935 their piece "Radio Times" fell foul of the censor presumably because it advertised a specific publication (which promoted the BBC)! This was a foxtrot that mentioned a number of publications and today seems anaemic in the extreme.
There seemed to be little or no reason behind the bans except for a committee of be-suited men who decided what we should and what we shouldn't listen to. I am currently working on a full feature on banned BBC music for my website. I will let you know when it's online.