As we step into the New Year here at The Archive we’re delighted to welcome two brand new titles – the Cannock Chase Chronicle and the Walsall Chronicle – to our collection, as we’ve added 469,636 brand new pages to our Archive over the last few weeks. That’s right, over the festive period we’ve been busily adding new newspaper titles and pages to our repository, with 41 of our existing titles being updated too. So, from Beverley to Buckingham, from Londonderry to Littlehampton, from Shrewsbury to Sunderland, we’ve added new pages to our newspapers from across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

So read on to discover more about our new and updated titles of the week. This week we also remember the Kegworth Air Disaster, which took place on 8 January 1989 and resulted in the deaths of 47 people.

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We’ve got a duo of new titles this week – the Cannock Chase Chronicle and the Walsall Chronicle – and it’s an extra special duo, as these two papers are actually sister publications. Both the Cannock Chase Chronicle and the Walsall Chronicle are part of the Chronicle series of newspapers, which also includes the Sandwell Chronicle in their number. The Chronicle newspapers are in turn weekly local editions of evening regional newspaper the Wolverhampton Express and Star. Founded in 1874, this popular regional paper is now known simply as the Express and Star.

Taking a closer look at the Cannock Chase Chronicle, this weekly paper, which came out every Friday, covered the latest news from the Cannock Chase, Lichfield and South Staffordshire areas. Based in Cannock, a town in Staffordshire, in the 1980s it had a distribution of some 43,500 copies.

Now for the Walsall Chronicle. One of two newspapers to serve the West Midlands market town of Walsall, the other being the Walsall Advertiser, the Walsall Chronicle likewise appeared every Friday. During the 1980s this title had a slightly higher distribution than its sister paper, the Cannock Chase Chronicle, with 46,300 copies of the publication circulating every week.

That’s it from our duo of new newspapers, but with 41 of our existing newspapers being updated this week, there’s still plenty of discoveries for you to make. A particular highlight are the new pages we’ve added to glossy magazine the Illustrated London News, whilst the South Yorkshire Times, Mexborough & Swinton Times and the Garstang Courier share the crown for the most new pages, both coming in with over 24,000 brand new pages this week.

Meanwhile, we have updated five of our Scottish titles – the Arbroath Herald, the Fife News, the Forfar Dispatch, the Montrose Review and the Southern Reporter – and one of our newspapers from Northern Ireland, namely the Londonderry Sentinel.

The Kegworth Air Disaster – 8 January 1989

On 8 January 1989, just a few weeks after the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, a British Midland jet crashed on an embankment on the M1 motorway near Kegworth, Leicestershire. Tragically, 47 passengers, out of a total of 117, lost their lives in the crash, with all eight crew members surviving.

Our newspapers provide a harrowing account of the disaster. For example, a day after the crash on 9 January 1989, the West Lancashire Evening Gazette reported how the crash, which occurred during an attempt at an emergency landing, had been ‘seconds away’ from being ‘another Lockerbie:’

Residents in the nearby village of Kegworth said thoughts of the Lockerbie Christmas tragedy came into their minds as the jet came down and the ‘sky lit up red.’ One praised the pilot for managing to avoid the village. ‘It could have wiped out the entire area,’ said David Harris.

Accounts were beginning to emerge of the horrific toll of the crash, the West Lancashire Evening Gazette detailing how 43 people were confirmed as having passed away, after ‘more victims had died in hospital.’ Meanwhile, there was a strong forces presence on the aircraft, which had been travelling from London Heathrow to Belfast, and had attempted to make an emergency landing at the East Midlands Airport:

…the Army in Ulster confirmed that four servicemen were listed among the dead and unaccounted for. The Royal Ulster Constabulary said a number of its officers were also on board the London to Belfast flight, returning home from holiday. The servicemen were among 26 forces personnel on the British Midland Airways Boeing 737 carrying 126 passengers and crew which crashed in flames into a motorway embankment in Leicestershire last night.

As more details of the crash emerged, and the causes of it had been identified (engine failure followed by the incorrect shut-down of the operating engine), people across the country strove to offer help and support to those impacted by the disaster. Our new newspaper this week, the Walsall Chronicle, a few months later on 7 April 1989, reported how ‘a group of six pupils from St Margaret’s School, Great Barr have raised £60 for the M1 Kegworth air disaster appeal.’

The Walsall Chronicle noted how ‘the group, including Angela Slater, ten, and brother Richard, eight, heard about the fatal crash earlier this year and decided to raise money to help the injured and relatives of those killed.’ Angela, Richard and their friends ‘staged a fun run to help and handed their cheque over to Leicestershire councillors Mr Walter Quelch and Mrs Agnes Smith at the school’s Easter service.’

This kind gesture demonstrates the widespread impact of such an event as the Kegworth Air Disaster, provoking the generosity of the likes of Angela and her friends, as described by the Walsall Chronicle.

Discover more about the Kegworth Air Disaster, other aviation incidents, and much more besides, in the pages of our Archive.

New Titles

Updated Titles

This week we have updated 41 of our existing titles.

You can learn more about each of the titles we add to every week by clicking on their names. On each paper’s title page, you can read a free sample issue, learn more about our current holdings, and our plans for digitisation.

You can keep up to date with all the latest additions by visiting the recently added page.  You can even look ahead to see what we’re going to add tomorrow.