This year the Oldham Mountain Rescue Team is celebrating its 50th anniversary of helping people across the community.
Here, the team looks back at its colourful history from 1964 to 1996.
DURING THE bad winter of 1963 two climbers were killed by an avalanche in Wilderness Gully, Chew Valley. The following year a group of Scouts in the 4 Inns Walk in the Peak District became lost and died due to hypothermia.
As a result, the Peak District Mountain Rescue Organisation (PDMRO) was set up in 1964 to co-ordinate a set of new mountain rescue teams.
The Oldham Rover Mountain Rescue Team was started by the Scout organisation and its headquarters were at the BP Centre on Glodwick Road.
During the early 70s, due to increasing difficulties of meeting costs, the team became independent and was made into a charitable trust. An old coach house near Tunstead, Greenfield, was generously made available by George Dew for the team ambulance.
An Austin Champ was also obtained and this was based at the Cross Keys, Uppermill, courtesy of Harold Nield. During the mid 70s both of these vehicles were sold and a Land Rover was purchased.
This vehicle was garaged courtesy of the Local Authority at Stoneswood, Delph, and team meetings took place in the local Police Station. Eventually a cell was made available at Uppermill Police Station and this served as the team’s headquarters until 1986.
In 1981, following a weekend training seminar with the Anglesey Coastguard, a number of team members suggested the Oldham team could run something similar to demonstrate the techniques and specialist equipment developed for our local crags.
‘The Oldham Weekend’ has been running ever since, with participants from Mountain Rescue in England and Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Eire, and also the Coastguard, Police and other organisations involved.
In 1986, Lees Brewery generously made the barn at the Cross Keys available as a headquarters, with garage and meeting space as well as storage facilities, to say nothing of the refreshments after a hard day on the hill!
The team has more than 50 members presently on the call-out list. All members are voluntary and most of the cost of buying and maintaining equipment is met by collections and donations.
Following a fire in the headquarters in 1990 which led to the destruction of almost all the team gear, an appeal was launched to raise £14,000. This target was well exceeded and the renovated headquarters was officially re-opened by Mr D Wilmot, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, in 1991.
The additional funds purchased a new Land Rover and the team was also donated a trailer by Manweb which was converted to an incident control unit.
In 1994 we looked at further ways of improving our services. We decided to investigate the use of pagers to improve our response time. We were able to negotiate a competitive deal with Vodapage for both ourselves and the rest of the Peak District teams, and our team purchased more than 40 pagers. These proved very effective in both increasing the number of people responding to an incident and significantly reduced the time taken to get out on the hill.
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