This week we have unearthed more pictures of top Bracknell stories from the late 80s.

February 1989 saw the shock announcement of the closure of British Aerospace, then touted as Bracknell’s largest employer.

It had been at the heart of the community since the New Town was created, with a high staff turnover and labour shortages given as the cause for the closure of the 25-acre site. Its 1,900 staff members had heard the previous week that the Bracknell plant would be shut by 1990.

March saw The Rev Malcolm Hancock, curate at Sandhurst Parish Church, and his wife Juliet welcome their first child, James Timothy Michael, at Frimley Park Hospital.

The new father told the News at the time: “It is really lovely. Being a father is absolutely smashing.”

In the same month, Bracknell Tigers basketball team hit the jackpot when they defeated favourites MIM Livingston to win the NatWest trophy final at Aston Villa Leisure Centre.

In their first appearance at a national final, the team took the control from the start and won 89-81 in front of millions of BBC Grandstand viewers and a 400-strong group of supporters.

The parents of brave Bracknell toddler Sarah Hunt called on residents to help them raise enough money so they could send her to California, at one of the world’s top schools for teaching deaf children to speak.

March also saw a clothes show come to Wokingham when pupils at Luckley Oakfield school took to the catwalk to help fund school equipment.

Hundreds of people packed into the school’s sports hall to watch students aged between 11 and 18 model clothes.

They raised enough money to get a heart and pulse sensor for the school’s science lab.

In other news, Ascot Girl Guide Fiona Cameron received the highest possible award for Girl Guides.

Fiona, then aged 15, from Winkfield and of the Second Ascot (All Saints) Company, received the Baden Powell Trefoil award, reportedly making her the first in the district to get the honour.

She had to compete for a number of badges and joined other camping expeditions to get her outdoor experiences.

Finally, young ballet dancers almost missed out on getting their certificates after they were stolen alongside a teacher’s car.

Thirty five pupils at the Berkshire Ballet and Theatre School, which met in All Saints Church Hall, Ascot, had taken various exams in ballet and tap, and had been long-awaiting their results.

When they came through, their teacher had left them in her car near Reading – but her car and the certificates were both stolen.

Thankfully, the National Association of Teachers of Dancing reissued the certificates and they were given out to the eager students.