The Wokingham Society gathers together to recognise Jim’s e-book ‘Wokingham in the News’. Photo from the Wokingham Times
Wokingham Remembers presents a picture of a small forest town and how it was affected by the Great War. There have been invaluable contributions from a number of Berkshire people; one of them being local historian Jim Bell. For the last twelve months, we’ve been ringing Jim on his home phone only to hear that he was visiting Reading library and transcribing the Wokingham news from the Reading Chronicle. The result is a staggering achievement for one person to go through 85 years of newspapers and to then donate the results to anyone who wants to read them. The contents of ‘Wokingham in the News’ can be found via this page; 374 A4 pages of Wokingham gold. You can save the work to your laptop as with all PDF’s and there is a search facility which can find all sorts of information, from surnames to street names, from the well-known to the previously unknown.
So what can be found in this treasure trove of Wokingham news? The town, although full of its own day to day gossip is also a microcosm of the much broader movement of British history. For instance, we learn of the break-up of Billingbear Mansion in 1924 and also Buckhurst and Glebelands fall into dis-use and on page 332 there is a greater study of the decline of the great houses of the area. From our own information, three of the four sons of the Hills Nicholson family (Matthews Green House) were killed in the Great War as was the only son of the Allfrey family; owners of Ashridgewood House. Between 1914 and 1918 there is obviously the sad news of the men of Wokingham killed during the war, but there are also regular updates and fund raising for the Boer War and its parts such as the Relief of Mafeking. It was here incidentally, that the great name our own childhood experiences, Lord Baden Powell became one of the heroes of the Mafeking siege. On page 345, in 1936, the Wokingham Council discusses the precautions which need to be taken in the event of an air raid; here we receive first hand news about the worries the country had about a new conflict, some years before WW2.
Names who we know as just roads and buildings, become real life people; Messrs Barrett, Eustace and Martin were all well respected council members throughout much of Wokingham’s twentieth century.
All this information has been extracted and is of use free of charge. If you do decide to use any of this work, please ensure you reference Jim Bell as the source.
Click to view and/or download:
Wokingham in the News by Jim Bell