Page 3 - Frank Day's memories and Day Family article

was a pork butcher, owned by Mr Bert Harrison, who sold pigs' trotters and pork pies and

made a lovely lard for 2 pence a pound. He was a big man and always chain-smoked, but he
kept all his cigarette ends and gave them to us, sometimes 50 ends for a week. Next to him

was Tommy May's Coal Offices.

In the alley and at the rear of that was Seward's Saw Mills. The shop next to the alley was

J. Ward and Son, painting and decorating merchants and then came the coffee shop, and then
Lee's the printers, followed by the greengrocer come pie and cooked meat shop owned by a

Mr & Mrs Johnson. She was really a wonderful lady but at today's hygiene standards, she
would never have been allowed to open. The fruit and veg was left in boxes and just stacked

in the window, the cooked meat laid on the counter covered by a sheet, and the pies were

hung up near the ceiling on orange box lids with iron tied round the wood and hooked on to
nails in the beams, and if one went for a pie she would grab one from the rack and wrap it in

newspaper. She was a good old sort and we all liked her. Then next to her was Caigers' Shoe
Shop owned by two sisters and I went in there many a time for a pennyworth of tacks. Next

to them was the British and Argentina Meat Company. The manager of B&A Meat Company
was Mr George Flint, a very popular man in Wokingham and his mate there was Mr Philip

Hartnell. Next along there was the Corn and Seed Merchant, Mr G. Ford & Son, and the last

shop on that side before the Market Place was the Home and Colonial Store.

Going down Peach Street towards the old church (as it was called) and next to the Welcome
Inn was a yard, and at the back was the Scout Hall, where we used to meet every Saturday, in

the cubs. Our cub mistress was a Miss Holloway, and she lived in the first house in Molly

Millar's Lane from the Barkham Road end. Then there were two cottages before one got to
South Place, and there were three or four houses in South Place. Mrs Cooney lived in the

first, the Wilsons in the second and the Donagues in the last one.

Next along was the garage owned by Hamilton & Goddard. Both of these men had a lot to do

with motor racing at Brooklands, and they lived in Murdoch Road. Next to them was the
Blacksmiths, Berry & Painter (coming home from school we used to go and watch them

shoeing horses and making the horse shoes). Mr Painter was also a partner in the butcher's
shop in Denmark Street, Painter & Gosling, where the old Drill Hall was. On the corner of

Peach Street and Easthampstead Road, was Mr Collins' Cycle Repair Shop and Battery
Charger for the batteries (we called them accumulators) which we had to take to him twice a