FOLLOWING the Colchester Council elections, Sir Bob 's column looks back 100 years to what things were like at the Town Hall a century ago.

The mayor in 1916 was Councillor Allen Aldridge.

The Town Hall had been opened only 14 years previously. This was the mid-way point of The Great Wa r.

The town’s population was around 40,000 – today it has topped 100,000. For the wider borough it is about 170,000.

Two things which Mayor Aldridge, a Liberal, would notice if he presided over a council meeting today is women councillors.

In 1916 women had yet to be given the vote, let alone be elected to public office.

He would also be puzzled as to why there were councillors representing places like Dedham and Layer-de-la-Haye, and other villages.

At that time, the town council (or Corporation) only looked after the town – it was to be almost another 60 years, in 1974, when today’s borough was expanded to take in nearby villages.

Although visually the decorative council chamber is broadly unchanged, Mayor Aldridge, who was a tallow merchant, would be astonished that much of the work of the Corporation in 1916 does not happen in 2016.

Whereas a century ago the council met every month, and had many committees, today’s “cabinet system”

means there are hardly any committees and there are only four full council meetings each year.

Reading newspaper reports from 100 years ago, mention is made of a report to councillors by the medical officer of health with a wide range of committees: watch committee (Colchester had its own police force), estate and cattle market, borough and port health, water supply, public library, harbour and navigation, electricity supply, tramways, financial and general purposes, (oyster) fishery, museum and monuments, parks and bathing place, lighting, parliamentary and footpaths preservation, and cemetery.

In 1916 the town council had 32 members: 24 councillors in eight wards, each serving three years plus eight aldermen (elected by councillors) serving six years.

As the town grew the number increased to 36 members, with nine wards.

There were 27 councillors and nine aldermen, which is how I remember it up to 1974, when local government re-organisation led to the merger of Colchester with the neighbouring Lexden and Winstree Rural District and the Urban District Councils at West Mersea and Wivenhoe. The post of alderman was abolished.

A little bit of confusion is that the area of Colchester known as Lexden was not in the local authority area called Lexden and Winstree – these two names are those of geographic Saxon Hundreds prior to the Norman Conquest in 1066.

The newly-constituted Colchester Borough Council had 60 councillors, each serving terms of four years.

Despite the borough’s population soaring, that figure was reduced last week to 51 councillors in 17 three- member wards.

I make no comment as to whether the merging of town and country 42 years ago was a good thing, but what I will say is that it was ludicrous to use the geographic areas of Saxon Hundreds from some 1,000 years previously as the basis on which to form local authority boundaries in the last quarter of the 20th century.

Common-sense should have seen Ardleigh and Elmstead Market included in “greater Colchester” and not Tendring District – both are nearer the town than Tiptree after all.