THEY are starting to plant in a corner of Darlington's South Park. About 1,400 bulbs are going in, along with 2,469 shrubs, 2,065 herbaceous plants and ferns, 1,200 lavender bushes and 542 rosebushes.

The rosebushes are the most important because this corner, opposite the petrol station in Grange Road, is the WG Chandler Rose Garden.

William George Chandler is one of the 20th Century municipal figures who played the greatest part in pushing the case of the town's parks.

He was born in Bath in 1870 and served an apprenticeship as a cabinet maker, before finding work in Portsmouth, London and Eastbourne, where he met his wife, Mabel.

In 1897, they moved to Darlington to take up Mr Chandler's post as manager of Michael Clemenson's furniture business.

Mr Chandler became prominent during the First World War when he was one of the founders of the local War Savings Committee, which raised £4m to assist the war effort.

In 1926, he was elected to the council and he soon took charge of the Parks, Cemeteries and Baths Committee. In 1933, during a time of economic depression, he became mayor and sent the wives of unemployed men for a week's holiday by the sea.

In 1951, the council set about transforming an area of scrubland into a formal rose garden.

The garden was named after Mr Chandler and was opened on June 26, 1952, by the mayoress, Mrs W Sanders Hutton.

After the ceremony, Mr Chandler provided a bowls team to take on that of the mayor's on the lawn at the top of the terrace.

Unfortunately, he lost, by 63 shots to 51 - do you think any of the present crop of councillors would be able to raise a bowls team?

Mr Chandler died two years later aged 84. "His lasting memorial is likely to be the rose garden in South Park," noted the Evening Despatch, quite rightly.

PETER Massingham, of Piercebridge, has been in touch concerning our quest for German prisoners of war. He reckons there was a PoW camp in Hurworth, probably on the Ring Field opposite the village shop. His late brother-in-law, Harry Conner, was a guard at the camp.

Peter worked on a farm at High Coniscliffe, where he was assisted by four German PoWs from a camp in Hamsterley. "One of them was very surly, and there was an altercation between him and one of the mates over a hay fork," says Peter.

"He made a stance as though he was going to stab my mate with it."

This was reported to Hamsterley, and the PoW never appeared again.