GRAHAM Crawshaw and John Stanley helped tend the garden of Oakthorpe Road resident Dorothy Collett in December 1967.

They were among 250 boys from St Edward's School's voluntary service unit who were helping our neighbours in their local area.

Organising the initiative was 18-year-old James Swift who would leaving at the end of term.

He said: "When we started organising it, we decided to try to get things moving faster than they had been.

"Now we tape local news on to our tapes and tape recorder and give them out to blind people."

The school gave them a hut to work from and a list was kept of all the people visited.

Another part of their work was visiting Littlemore Hospital and meeting the patients.

James added: "We try to give them the more personal treatment, like playing chess with them, cards and just talking."