Published: Thursday, 29th May, 2008 08:00
Calling time on pub photo mystery
By David Cliffe
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IS THIS your local? All I can make out from the signboards is that it served Simonds’ ales and stout – the hop leaf design on the hanging sign is unmistakable.
The picture is not quite clear enough to show whether the single-storey building to the right of the pub was a petrol filling station. There is a motor vehicle in front of it, and what could be the top of a petrol pump behind it.
The road in front must be a fairly important one, to judge from the number of telegraph wires along it. Telegraph poles like these have almost vanished, though pre-war pictures show them to have been along almost every major road, railway and canal.
Sometimes the wires had corks threaded on to them at regular intervals. When I was a little boy, my parents told me that it was to give the birds somewhere more comfortable to perch, but I no longer believe them!
I wonder what the man in the light-coloured jacket was doing? Even with a magnifying glass, I can’t quite see. It looks as though he is pushing a delivery tricycle.
The postcard from which this picture comes is yet another from the Reading studio of Mr HA Giles, probably taken in the 1930s.
There is no caption, and nothing written on the back, but the pub is pretty certainly somewhere near Reading. Please get in touch if you
recognise it.
Leave your comments below or email lthorne@berksmedia.co.uk
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