Published: Thursday, 4th June, 2009 9:00am

Retro: Location, location, location - but where?

by David Cliffe

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WHILST there are many photographs in the Central Library"s collection which show the streets in the town centre, there are comparatively few pictures of residential areas, and ordinary houses.

For a while, back in the 1980s, we had an arrangement with a local estate agent whereby they would give us the photographs of properties they had sold - photographs which would otherwise have been thrown away.

Here is one such photograph - but someone has omitted to write on the back where this cottage was. All they have written is the year it was sold - 1985. I"m wondering whether any Retro readers can identify it.

It"s rather intriguing, because it looks as though at some time it has been extended on the right. You"d expect the chimney-stacks to have been at the end of the building, and the brickwork to the right is of a slightly paler colour than the rest.

The door is to the side, rather than at the front, which makes it look as though it may have been an estate cottage.

The drip-moulds, of brick, over the windows, are very unusual, and suggest that this is a cottage of some antiquity - certainly older than the second half of the nineteenth century, when Reading really began to spread out,

The fancy barge-boards are also distinctive - as is that doorway to the left with the Tudor arch which leads from the car-port, but this is probably recent.

It"s hard to say whether we"re in the country or the town here. The style of the building suggests the country, but the large roof in the background to the left suggests the town.

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