Published: Thursday, 23rd April, 2009 1:00pm

Retro: Postcard view

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THIS week, another postcard view from the studio of Harold Augustine Giles, of Audley Street, Reading, dating from the 1930s.

The large, two-storey house has a wooden fence along the front of it, and it looks as though a road runs parallel to the fence.

If you peer at the original postcard you can see a telegraph pole in front of the fence, to the left of that very tall Scots pine tree.

The foreground of the picture has faded somewhat, but it looks like a piece of rough ground covered with furze.

It seems likely that Mr Giles would be on another road which is about to join the road by the house, with his camera and bicycle, looking over the rough ground to the house. It would be good to know where the house was - and probably still is.

Here, we have been given a clue - Mr Giles has written Glebe House on the back.

In fact he has written it as a mirror image, and must have been practising before scratching the words, backwards, into the emulsion on his glass photographic negative.

Glebe land was originally land set aside for the maintenance of a parish priest.

Sometimes this was rented out by the priest in return for rent, but usually, the priest worked on it himself. Reading, of course, has a Glebe Road. I used to get off the bus there when I lived in The Mount.

The name here dates only from the early 20th century.

It was originally called Church Road - the 1899 Ordnance Survey map shows it as such, but by the 1911 map, the name had changed to Glebe Road.

I expect there were so many Church Roads and Church Streets in Reading and its suburbs that some confusion had arisen, and the name had been changed.

But in our photograph, we are probably some miles outside the town, amid rough ground and massive trees.

Please get in touch if you recognise the building, so that I can catalogue the postcard accurately, rather than relegating it to the 'unidentified' images.

l Call The Chronicle newsroom on 0118 963 3152.