It’s been a while now since we reminded you that all of your parish council’s minutes, right back to when the council was formed in December 1894, are available here on the parish council web site. The earlier ones are scans of the pages (and are hand written or, later, typed) but from May 1998 they are searchable PDFs.

When we first read them this one stuck out from 29th July 1958 which reads:

Mr. Waghorn, Civil Defence Officer, Cambridgeshire
County Council, attended the meeting by invitation and
gave a detailed explanation or the communications system
which had been devised tor the purpose of relaying
warning messages and instructions down to every home in
the country, in the quickest manner possible. People
with telephones installed were to he invited to
co-operate by agreeing to receive messages in the event
or radio active “fall-out” becoming imminent and warning
their neighbours of the danger as quickly as possible,
as only a comparatively short time elapses between the
explosion of a nuclear weapon and the commencement or
“fall-out”.

In the event of this country becoming
involved in a nuclear war, the chance or Cambridgeshire
becoming part of a radio-active area is very high, in
view of the position or probable targets and the
direction of prevailing winds. The organisation of
the new communications system has been entrusted to the
Civil Defence Wardens, of whom there are six in the
village, and they will co-operate with other sections of
Civil Defence and with the Special Constabulary. The
Council agreed to publicise this communications system
in the village and when the system was launched to
encourage all those who were in a position to co—operate
to do so in order to achieve the greatest possible
success for the scheme.