SIXTY years ago in 1966 England won the Football World Cup, and here we are in 2026, and they’re in with an outside chance of doing it again.

Regardless of how that makes you feel, that’s an awful lot of sixes, at least three of them, and if you count the number of letters in Harry Kane’s name they add up to nine, which becomes six when you turn it upside down. What does it all portend? Only a numerologist or perhaps occultist could tell you!

What we can tell you is what was going on in the Abergavenny area when Alf Ramsey’s boys took home the silverware all those years ago.

We started 1966 with the demolition of the 18th-century gateway to Old Court in Tudor Street.

Coopers Mechanical Joints kept pace with an ever-increasing demand for large machine filters by carrying out a vast extension scheme of some 89.000 square feet of floor space.

In a bid to beat street lamp smashers who caused widespread damage in Abergavenny, the Borough Council fitted strong protective lights and wire cages on many lights in town “black spots.”

An increasing density of traffic through the town is a growing concern to members of Abergavenny Old Age Pensioners’ Association, and work on the construction of a new court building on a site in Tudor Street is expected to start in 1967. It will eventually replace the court at Baker Street Police Station, which was then believed to be about 100 years old.

There is an assurance that work on the construction of the new district hospital at Nevill Hall was progressing satisfactorily.

The new Youth Centre in Gilwern opens and marks another step forward for the village.

Crickhowell residents tell the Chronicle that they have been treated “very badly” over the decision to close the town’s secondary modern school and it’s announced that another 38 dwellings on the vast Croesonen housing estate on the outskirts of Abergavenny will soon be ready for occupation.

Monmouthshire County Council says they have no objection to a site in Pant Lane being used as a children’s playground on a temporary basis.

A group of Abergavenny Young Socialists stages a demonstration outside the gates of Cooper’s Mechanical Joints when the factory is visited by Mr George Thomas Minister of State for Wales.

Waving home-made banners protesting against the lack of social facilities for the youth of the town, the 13 youngsters did, however, raise a cheer as the Minister and his party arrived by car.

An assurance that rowdyism in the streets of Abergavenny would be stamped out was given by the Mayor, Alderman George Trnter, chairman of the town's magistrates.

Plans by the Ministry of Transport to build a slip-road to eliminate the dangerous turning from the Heads of the Valleys road to Lanfoist are welcomed by Councillor Jack Thurston, a motorist for 30 years who uses the road regularly.

And it's announced that excavation work which has started in Abergavenny's main shopping area will be carried out as quickly as possible to lessen the inconvenience to motorists and traders in the area.

We think you’ll agree. It was all go back in Abergavenny when England lifted the cup for the first, and perhaps, last time!