WE TAKE a look at the stories making headlines in East Lothian 25, 50 and 100 years ago.

25 years ago

‘HUMAN remains found at Abbeymains farm’ reported the East Lothian Courier on January 22, 1999.

The remains of a prehistoric human body were found in a short stone burial cist at Abbeymains farm just outside Haddington on Monday morning. Farm worker Dick Beck was ploughing a field of cornflowers at 5am when he unearthed the cist, about 18ins below the surface, and alerted farmer David Playfair to the find.

Mr Playfair then notified Historic Scotland and police were called out to the site.

City of Edinburgh archaeologists John Lawson and Mark Collard, who lives in nearby Morham, have spent the past few days excavating the one metre square cist, which, in addition to human bones, also contained a small beaker.

“It was amazing having this find right on our doorstep,” said Mr Playfair, who runs the 450 acre arable farm with his son Michael.

50 years ago

A POSSIBLE camping site next to North Berwick Law was ruled out, said the East Lothian Courier on January 25, 1974.

A suggestion that sites earmarked by the County Planning Committee for industrial use in future years should be used in the meantime as caravan and camping sites was made at the meeting of North Berwick Town Council on Tuesday.

This followed an approach by the Planning Department to see if the Council would agree to a camping site being established near the Law.

A report drawn up on the subject of caravans and camping proposed that places for 200 tents should be provided in the North Berwick area.

But on Tuesday a Planning Department representative was told by the Council that there was ‘no chance’ of a camping site adjoining the Law. Apart from other factors, the Law was now the subject of a Conservation Agreement with the National Trust, Provost John B Macnair pointed out.

100 years ago

A CRIMINAL on the run from the law was “smartly captured” in Dunbar, reported The Haddingtonshire Courier on January 25, 1924.

A young man named Herbert Wallace, who was formerly employed at a show ground in Edinburgh, was smartly captured in Dunbar on Friday by Constable Murray.

Information was received that the man in question had left the city, and within twenty minutes of receiving the message, he was apprehended by the Dunbar officer.

At Edinburgh Sheriff Court, on Saturday, Wallace, who had three previous convictions, was sentenced to five months’ imprisonment on a charge of having forged the owner’s name on a bank book at the general post office, and obtained £1.