Page 1014 - Reading Mercury

The daytime sessions have been lean but in the evenings there has been a fair
number of young people throwing their weight about in judo, fencing, improving the
body beautiful by weight training, and beauty care. Already many of them have made
themselves at home and their verdict on the centre is very favourable.

th
Thur 17 Sep
NEW CREMATORIUM
Work is expected to start next month on a £120,000 Crematorium at Easthampstead
Park Cemetery. The crematorium will open in February 1972 and will process about
250 burials and 650 cremations a year.

JOHNNY WEST SEES HIS DREAM COME TRUE
On a day in 1959 the founder of Johnny West’s Youth Club and the chairman of
Wokingham area Youth Committee set out to find a suitable site in the town for a
youth centre. They plumped for land between Montague House in Broad Street and
put their findings to the County Education Committee. On Friday night, eleven years
later, John West, now Mayor of Wokingham, officially opened the £37,500 centre that
he had wanted to see in the town ‘for a very long time.’

st
Thur 1 Oct 1970
TOWN HALL OFFER TO OLD FOLK
The Wokingham and District Association for the Elderly is to have first refusal of
the former fire station at Wokingham Town Hall. The Public Works Committee has
decided to offer it to the association with a request for suggestions as to its use by that
body. Mrs. Jean Davy, chairman of W.A.D.E. said that this was a wonderful gesture.

Thur 8th Oct
THREAT TO JOBS AS METALAIR SWITCHES PRODUCTION PLANT
Metalair Ltd., Engineers, Fishponds Road, Wokingham, are about to cease
manufacture at Wokingham, although certain other activities will be continued by
them from there. In July the company denied rumours that they were to close the
factory and a spokesman said, “As a group we are rationalising our manufacturing,
but plans for this have not yet been finalised.”
Asked this week if the “rationalisation” programme was now completed, Mr. C.J.
Woolhead, a director replied, “Yes, to a degree. Most of our production facilities are
moving to Lincolnshire, though we are retaining here our sales service, repairs, and
that side of it.”
Mr. Woolhead admitted that there would be some redundancies but could not state
at this stage how many workers would be involved or when this would occur. It is
understood that not many will be absorbed under the new arrangements.

th
Thur 15 Oct
A NEW LEASE OF LIFE FOR OLD PEOPLE
The residents of Palmer Court, the old people’s flats, have been given a new lease of
life said the Deputy-Mayor of Wokingham, Mrs. Jean Davy, at the official opening of
the council’s £90,000 project last week by the Mayor of Wokingham, Cllr. John West.
Palmer Court is 29 flats of single and double units with two specially equipped for
physically handicapped people. The old age pensioner residents, all from the
Wokingham area, moved into their fully-furnished homes seven weeks ago. The flats
have been designed to provide freedom and privacy, but there are bells in every flat

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