LOOKING back to the week of October 30 to November 5, ten years ago...

TAXPAYERS were having to pay travel expenses and hotel bills for prison officers due to a staffing crisis caused by the decision to shut Northallerton Prison, ten years ago.

Although the closure was hailed as a money-saving measure, the Prison Service was forced to call up Northallerton officers to guard former inmates who were moved to jails 75 miles away, in October 2013.

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The Northern Echo learned officers were being put up in hotels, given hire cars, expenses and overtime pay after officials at HMP Moorland and HMP Lindholme, near Doncaster, said they couldn’t cope with the sudden influx of new prisoners.

Critics accused the Government of rushing through the closure of Northallerton - one of the country’s best performing jails.

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An exhibition revealed how amateur football players from a North-East pit village were transformed from sporting legends to war heroes.

From Football Field to Battlefield, at Cornforth Library in West Cornforth, County Durham, charted the fate of the village’s football team of 1913-1914 during the First World War.

Some survived, some committed heroic acts of bravery and some paid the ultimate price, yet the smiling team photograph, taken just before war broke out, reveals nothing of the heartache to come.

The photograph was the centrepiece of the exhibition, which was the second staged by Andy Denholm and fellow members of West Cornforth Local History Society.

It was taken after Cornforth United won the Durham Hospital and Wingate Charity Cups.

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A PENSIONER hoped his singing skills would not attract too much vitriol from Simon Cowell as he aimed to put his home town on the map and win viewers’ hearts.

Crooner Kenneth Knight, from Crook, County Durham, was set to audition for Britain’s Got Talent, in London, on November 20, 2013, where he hoped his memorable version of Unchained Melody would hit the right notes with the show’s producers.

Although the 72-year-old did not sing professionally, he enjoyed singing in his house and back garden, and sang with the Sing For Life choir, in Spennymoor, County Durham.