Pound Street

Market Place 1952
Enlarge photo |  More about this photo

My first main job on leaving school (Shaw House) was as a tea boy-dogsbody at H C James timber and builders merchants in Pound Street. For quite a while I cycled daily from Highclere Castle, approx 4 miles, it took me just over half an hour to get there and one hour to return! Some hills! My duties included running a mess room, making tea etc twice a day and touring the town for cakes and pasties, some of the men were particular as to which shop sold the best! One in Barthlomew Street near the Regal cinema, on round to Cheap Street to Austins for pasties and Nelsons squares, then to the Empire Cafe for lardy cakes, returning via Market Street and Barts again for fairy cakes near Black Boys bridge. After using a cycle for a while my father bought me an ex post office BSA bantam motor bike, painted green, it was purchased from someone my dad knew who worked at Bleinhem Palace. I rode that for a while till I bought an Ariel Leader from Wheelers near the clock tower, one of the first in Newbury at that time, it was a thrill to ride that home through the town, I owned it for ten years. Meanwhile, back to H. James, in due course I was promoted to mill hand in the sawmill, there was a large tin shed rear of this that was the Enborne ice cream factory, useful in the summer, it got hot under the corrugated tin! In due course this was demolished and replaced with a modern brick building with extraction for sawdust and shavings, some of which found its way on to a few butchers' shop floors in the town. I have fond memories of waving to the passengers on the Cornish Riviera Express as it thundered past and under the Rockingham Road rail bridge. That's all for the moment, I hope this will be of interest to someone. Cheers, P J Mills.