Bride’s unlucky break
Honeymoon is postponed after freak accident at wedding, May 1, 1947 OLD MEMORIES REVIVED Extracts taken from past columns of the
150 years ago May 2 1872
Furze fire charge
WILLIAM Andrews was charged with setting fire to the furze on Sidmonton common, on Sunday the 14th of April last.
The lad, it appears, was setting fire to the furze and confessed the same to his master, Mr. Joseph Rumbold. Discharged with caution to come up when called on for judgement.
125 years ago May 4 1897
Cemetery costs
PRECEPTS for £70 and £30 for Burial Board and Parish Council expenses were agreed to.
The committees were reappointed, and the Cemetery Committee were empowered to exclude children from the cemetery unless accompanied by adult friends. An application by Mr F Head for an advance in his salary as an assistant overseer, was postponed to the next meeting for further information.
The Footpaths Committee were requested to press for the kerbing of the footways in the main streets.
With reference to the nuisance from the Outfall Works of the Newbury Sewage, a letter from the Town Clerk was read, promising that every effort should be made to abate it.
IT seems to have been there forever, but here’s a picture of building work starting on the new shopping centre and flats
100 years ago May 4 1922
Teacher tragedy
QUITE a painful sensation was created in the village in Parkway in 2008.
The picture was taken from the Marks & Spencers roof.
This barren landscape is now
of Shaw-cum-Donnington yesterday when it became known that the body of Miss Lizzie Blackwell, an assistant mistress at Shaw Schools, had been found in the river Lambourn in the Park at home to 37 retail outlets. n To submit an image for this page, email editor@newburynews.co.uk or
Donnington Grove.
Miss Blackwell had for some years past been a teacher at the school, and she left her home just before nine o’clock yesterday morning as usual to attend her daily duties. As she did not arrive at the school a messenger was sent up to her home at Donnington Grove, where she lives at
The Stables, to ascertain the cause.
Naturally some uneasiness was felt when it was found she was not there.
A search was instituted, and as someone had noticed that she did not go straight to the village in the morning, but had been seen to turn into the Park, and over White Bridge, this course was followed, and it was then that the tragic discovery was made.
The police were called, and the body was removed from the water to her home.
75 years ago May 1 1947
Wedding woes
A MOST unfortunate accident befell Mrs HE Darby after her wedding at Newbury Parish Church last Wednesday. Slipping on some steps, she sustained a compound fracture of her right ankle and is still in hospital and likely to be for some time.
Mrs Darby had come to Newbury to be married from the home of her sister, Mrs HJ Gurr, the President of the Newbury Chamber of Commerce.
After the accident she was taken to the Newbury District Hospital where the bone was set and the leg encased in plaster of Paris.
Afterwards she was removed to Horsham, her home town, and is now in Horsham Hospital.
It was a quiet wedding. The bride’s name was Mrs AR Bartlett and the bridegroom send it to: Local History, Newbury Weekly News, Newspaper House, Faraday Road, Newbury, RG14 2AD.
Mr HE Darby.
The bride is captain of the ladies’ section of the Horsham Bowling Club.
In the spring her sister,
Mrs Gurr, had been making arrangements to go to Canada to see her mother, but the visit had to be postponed owing to difficulties of securing a passage at the moment.
50 years ago May 4 1972
Girl’s UFO scare
A NEWBURY club which investigates reports of unidentified flying objects is setting up a “skywatch” in the Wickham area after yet another sighting in that district.
The latest report comes from Mr KJ Rutterford, of Wickham.
His daughter Linda, making a phone call to her boyfriend from a kiosk in the village just before 10pm last Wednesday, spotted “an orange light” in the sky.
She said later that it was stationary above the Five Bells public house.
She watched it for some time and commented on it to her boyfriend over the phone. It reportedly changed from dim to bright, and finally started to move off slowly over the public house. It gained speed and travelled to a point above the kiosk. Linda judged that it was above tree-height and said it appeared to have two very blue-white lights within itself. Mr Rutterford said in a letter to the NWN that his daughter was so frightened that she hung up on the boyfriend and rang the village stores, where her schoolmate lives.
As she did so, she saw the object disappear from view over the kiosk, but she could not see it pass back into her view on the other side.
She described it as making a crackling noise.
25 years ago May 1 1997
Park opening
THE Newbury Retail Park in Pinchington Lane, which opens for the first time today, could eventually create about 300 full and part-time jobs in the town.
But developers have had to fight hard for the right to build it against opposition from local councils, and fears remain about the damage outof-town developments could do to the long-term health of the Newbury town centre. Discount store chain Poundstretcher will open the first shop on the retail park, with Kingsbury Interiors due to open tomorrow and the giant Homebase DIY superstore following suit on May 8.
A McDonald’s drive-through restaurant should also open this month, along JJB Sports, electrical retailers Tempo and Scottish Power, Sharps bedrooms, Shoe City and curtain makers Rosebys. Mr Jonathan Cox, of developers Helical Retail, said these employers would create about 250 jobs, with Homebase alone creating 66 mainly part-time posts. Poundstretcher is also set to employ three full-time and 19 part-time workers.
Phase two of the retail park
– a Pizza Hut restaurant and a Sports Division store – is also due for completion in September.
Pizza Hut alone could employ about 35 people there. Newbury District Council argued that the retail park
would not create enough jobs when it threw out plans for it in 1993, and also worried about the effect it would have on town centre businesses.
10 years ago May 3 2012
Ikea opposition
THE fight over the planned Ikea store in Calcot is not over, according to those who opposed the plans.
The Swedish flat-pack furniture giant’s proposal for a new 40,000 sq m store, with adjoining 1,179 space multi-storey car park near Junction 12 of the M4 was approved by West Berkshire planners last month, but now those opposing the scheme have asked that the matter be referred to the Secretary of State for the Environment. The request for the call-in by the Secretary of State was filed by West Berkshire councillor Alan Macro (Lib Dem, Theale) on April 10. Mr Macro called the traffic figures presented to West Berkshire Council into question.
His request for calling it in has been welcomed by some of those who opposed the scheme, including the Save Calcot Action Group. Mr Macro admitted that there was limited scope for success, saying: “It is a bit of a long shot, but we have to try everything we can.”