Alfie Johnson - in his own words
Alfie Johnson - In Loving Memory
Alfie Johnson passed away on 7 May 2019 aged 88.
In 2016 we put together a small exhibition on the history of the town during the past 90 years to celebrate HM The Queen's 90th birthday as the theme for the town's annual Civic Service held at St Mary's Church. Former Town Cryer and well-loved local resident Alfie Johnson was a few years off his own 90th birthday, having only recently handed over his bell to another well-known member of our community - former Special Constable Mike Tupman.
We asked Alfie if he would be prepared to share his memories of the last "nearly-90" years with us to form part of that exhibition, and he kindly invited Dawn Whitehall (a member of our team who was helping put the exhibition together), round to his house to look through his carefully recorded archive of photographs, diaries and news clippings. As he said himself, some of the facts and dates may not be quite right but we hope you'll overlook that.
For those of you who didn't see the exhibition, and as a lasting tribute to Alfie, we thought it would be appropriate to share this record of some of his memories with you. Find the article in our photo galleries section on the Community pages - or click here