Life Stories

Let’s begin with a word from Fiona Price, CEO of Age UK Berkshire who has worked closely with us throughout the project. She is a passionate advocate for older people and sees first-hand the benefit this type of project has on the community.

“I’ve lived in Reading all my life, I was born here, and not many people are now. I’m proud of Reading. My mother’s father was a Collier and I am the great granddaughter of EP Collier and I am also the great great granddaughter of the brick makers who made the bricks for the Old Town Hall and Queen Victoria Street – so I think that I’m a Reading girl.”

Image Caption: Exterior of Town Hall, Reading. P DX322 PH1/DL/62.

“I was born in Perivale. We used to live in a two up two down in Hayes and we were offered a brand-new house in Woodley on an estate, so we moved up to Woodley in 1977. The M4 didn’t go that far then, it hadn’t been built, and neither had Lower Earley, so it was all fields. The old airport with the control tower from the old airfield was there. It was a right rural place back then. Suddenly they started building houses. We wanted to bring the family up in the country away from London.”

Image Caption: Earley railway station 1880 -1939. P DX322 PH1/DL/608.

“We had freedom in those days playing out until 9 o’clock at night, and none of us had a watch but we all seemed to know when it was time to go in. We used to play balls up the wall and hopscotch, had it all chalked out on the pavement. We played skipping, and we’d sing…

Vote, vote, vote for Elsie Miller,
Here comes Maggie at the door.
Maggie is the one who makes all the fun,
So we don’t need Elsie anymore,
Shut the door.”

Image Caption: Skipping rope. MERL 76/207.

“I wanted to be a boy. I hated being a girl. I absolutely loathed dolls. Boys had so much more fun. People didn’t question them, and I had to sneak out round corners so people didn’t see me whereas boys could just walk off. I didn’t have any friendships with boys. I copied them, I trailed along behind them, but they wouldn’t have anything to do with me. I wore my brother’s clothes whenever I could get away with it. I played with his steam train set. I wasn’t allowed to play with it on my own in case I might burn myself. I wasn’t supposed to have matches either, but I did!”

Image Caption: Children Playing 1937. P DX289 PH1/543/1-3.

“Google is my first port of call these days but when I was young, you would go to the encyclopaedia to find something. We used to have this fantastic set of encyclopaedias. They were red-bound with gold and the leaves of the pages were so fine that my dad used to sit right next to me and say, ‘don’t you damage those.’ And we would look things up for schoolwork, all very delicate and fine, but they were really lovely. I do go to Google for information but those encyclopaedias, you can’t replace that memory. It was hallowed ground in the corner of the lounge where they were stored in a unit…”

Image Caption: Children in the classroom, children’s course at Moulton Farm Institute (Sept 1944). P FW PH1/S&G38949.

“When I was a child, I loved the radio. I loved the serials –‘Just William’, ‘Jennings & Derbyshire’, ‘Toy Town’, ‘Dick Barton, Special Agent’ and ‘Journey Into Space’. They were happy days when you had to imagine rather than see. But every Saturday, mum, dad and I would go to the ‘Glendale’ and sit in the same seats by the radiator, a lovely little cinema, and then we would come back and listen to the omnibus addition of The Archers, sitting round the fire. I used to love turning out the lights and we sat by the light of the fire.”

Image Caption: Black & white plate negative of a typical Essex cottage interior (1950-59). P TAR PH1/3/4/352/1.

“We were very keen on buying records and playing them on our own record players. We used to save our pocket money, we got three shillings in those days. The coffee bars were a new innovation, as teenagers we used to meet there. We didn’t go to pubs until we were much older. We used to have our meetings in coffee bars. It had a jukebox, we used to put money in and play music. We used to gather at the weekend and go to a coffee bar, like having our own youth club.”

Image Caption: Black & white photographic print of window display for Columbia Records. P DX322 P4/4.

“In the past that’s what we had, we had dancehalls where we used to meet. In Reading there were three dance halls; there was the Oxford Ballrooms, The Majestic in Caversham and London Street had the Olympia. I met my wife in the Oxford Ballrooms 62 years ago. It was an interesting ballroom; it was actually two halls. If you didn’t like the music in one you could go to the other for perhaps jazz, the other one would be for waltzing and one would be for jitterbugging. The three or four piece band were up on the balcony in the dancehall – happy memories.”

Image Caption: Given by kind permission of Robert Davey.

“When I was 14, I went to work at H&G Simonds brewery, just off Fobney Street, in the bottling hall. Because I was young, I wasn’t allowed to do heavy work so one of my first jobs was putting the four-pint cans of beer onto the conveyor belt that got filled up and then loading empty bottles into the washer. Both my grandfathers worked there too, and my dad, he was a cooper there. This is my paternal grandfather, James Champion. He worked, as a driver, in the transport department. He was there, driving the horses and cart drays, before the motorised drays arrived.”

Image Caption: Black & white photographic print of a Leyland solid tyred lorry belonging to Simonds Brewery. P DX322 P4/9.

“My dad had privilege tickets from the railway. We used to go around free of charge to loads of places in the British Railways Western Region. I remember going to Southsea near Portsmouth for our first holiday. Dad had saved hard for the holiday and it rained every day! The landlady used to come in, draw back the curtains and say, “I’m afraid it’s still raining”. I remember vividly that Southsea seafront had a skating rink and we used to sit under cover and watch the skaters go round and round in the rain. I remember the tune they played was ‘September Song’. They were happy times.”

Image Caption: Black & white of rough seas smashing the defences and damaging the promenade, Friar Cliff, Christchurch (1974). P TAR PH3/2/8/11/32.

“Kendrick school choir was great. We stood in the Abbey Gardens and sang ‘Summer is icumen in‘ on the radio programme ‘Down your Way’ with Franklin Engelmann, in 1956. We also sang when the Queen came to Reading to open the Queens Drive at the University (in 1957) we – as a choir – stood round the monument outside the Town Hall and sang the national anthem as the Queen arrived. The Duke of Edinburgh came over and spoke to the people in the row in front of me, but I didn’t speak to him.”

Image Caption: Given by kind permission of Jan Butler.

“It’s been a great pleasure putting pen to paper and writing poetry for the project. I’ve always had a love of history and have written poetry from the age of 10 years old. It’s been an amazing experience for me to combine my interests of history and poetry. This project has really brought me great joy and reward as I’ve been able to laugh and share with my dad who recalls many happy memories with his friends at The Majestic Club in Reading. I would like to dedicate these poems to the people of Reading and to my loving dad.”

Click here to view the full collection of recorded poems.

“I have lived here 30 years and I have learned new things about Reading from doing this project. My basic interest in history means this sort of project always interests me. Hearing about past events, these are the sort of links that make the whole thing interesting. I like reading obscure biographies of people who aren’t well known but have led interesting lives. This fits in exactly to the sort of thing I am interested in, little snippets that fascinate me. I’m happy to listen to these stories – suits me down to the ground. It encourages you to think about your own story and writing it down.”

“What works for our guys is being diverse, not focused one on subject, with the use of pictures, it really taps into their older memories, it might not be connected to the actual photo itself but it’s something that sparks of an experience or memory of their own. One of the clients in particular really loved it and was hugely disappointed when it finished – Why can’t we just carry on all the time?”