The special care baby unit at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford has been a favourite for fundraisers for many years.

Groups large and small and many individuals have supported it to give babies the best possible start in life.

Many will know the unit by its initials, SSNAP – the official title, Support for the Sick New Born and their Parents, is difficult for many of us to remember.

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Picture 1 shows a young team from Blackbird Leys who bought Easter eggs with their pocket money, raffled them and handed the £27 they raised to the baby unit in 1986.

The ‘magnificent seven’, as the Oxford Mail called them, were Gail Backhouse, 12, Teresa Backhouse, 10, David Pointer, 14, Christopher Gregory, 11, Siobhan Harrison, 10, Bernadette Harrison, 13, and Jason Dillon, 13.

SSNAP secretary Madeleine Radburn is seen receiving the cheque from Gail, whose parents are also in the picture.

Darts players at the White Hart pub at Harwell, near Didcot, in Picture 2, were on the oche for 24 hours and hit the bullseye, raising £500 for the unit.

The first dart was thrown at 8.30pm and 443,000 points later, landlady Moira Boulton threw the last three darts to round off the marathon.

The players were Michael and Martin Hogan, Paul and Gordon Gunning, Dave Jopling, James Quinton, Alan Neville, Tony Storer, Philip Denton and Paul Kindough.

It was sport of a different kind that gripped regulars at the Duke of Monmouth pub in Abingdon Road, Oxford.

The team of 16, some of them in Picture 3, were right on cue as they played pool for 24 hours and raised £500 to be shared by two charities, one of them the baby unit.

Many religious groups were represented as the walkers in Picture 4 took part in a trek at Shotover in 1989, while in Picture 5, we see Michael Jakeman, 23, of Spenlove Close, Abingdon, left, and Paul Eden, of Bucknell, near Bicester, who took part in a seven-hour karting marathon in 1988.

Another of the many groups to support the unit was Abingdon Round Table. Members led by their chairman, Victor Hearmon, are seen in Picture 6 handing over a £650 humidifier to the Duchess of Marlborough in 1982, bringing the Table’s donations to charities that year to £8,000.

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About the author 

Andy is the Trade and Tourism reporter for the Oxford Mail and you can sign up to his newsletters for free here. 

He joined the team more than 20 years ago and he covers community news across Oxfordshire.

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