Page 1139 - Reading Mercury

Radyne’s factory. The firm had offered full redundancy money and had paid the staff
in lieu of giving them full notice.

RESIDENTS PROTEST AS GRAVES ARE DUG UP
The graves at Milton Road Baptist Church are being moved to make way for a new
church hall. Among the dead who are being dug up from their final resting places are
town mayors, lay preachers and church elders.
The church won permission to develop the graveyard after a long planning battle.
Church leaders say that their old hall is inadequate and too old to maintain. Luff
builders are preparing the ground and clearing the gravestones, while a specialist
company will disinter the bones by hand. The bodies contained in the 150 graves will
be re-interred in the Wokingham Free Churchyard in Reading Road, Wokingham.
The Baptist Church received no protests from families who had relatives buried in
the graveyard but a number of residents are dismayed at the destruction of such an old
graveyard.
Whole families including the Brants, the Heelas family, the Sales and the Butlers
were laid to rest in this churchyard.

Thur 4th June
WAR VETERANS CONGRATULATE MABEL AS SHE REACHES 100
Kindness shown to soldiers during the Second World War was remembered when a
former Wokingham Mayoress celebrated her 100th birthday. Mabel Perkins was first
lady from 1937 to 1938 when her husband Frank was Mayor.
As her family gathered together for the centenary celebrations memories came
flooding back. Daughters Marion and Barbara recalled how during the war her mother
opened her home to evacuees and Canadian soldiers. Marion explained that at one
time five little girl evacuees from London were in the house, while bunks were put in
attic for 20 soldiers billeted there. Mrs Perkins opened her kitchen to the Canadians,
stationed so far from home making them homemade soup and providing a few home
comforts.
On her birthday that work was recognised when, along with a telegram from the
Queen, Mrs. Perkins received a telegram from the Canadian High Commissioner. The
Canadian Veterans’ Association UK also plans to plant a tree in honour of her 100th
birthday.
The £10,000 scheme to reverse the direction of buses around Wokingham will be in
operation as from next Monday.

th
Thur 16 July
TOWN MAYOR JOINS THE BIG SLEEP-OUT
Wokingham Mayor, Bob Wyatt was one of about a dozen people sleeping rough in
the town on Friday night. And he said it was worth it despite the discomfort. The
townspeople volunteered for the sponsored sleep-out to raise money for CARITAS,
the charity aiming to set up a hostel for the homeless in Wokingham. They slept the
night in the entrance of Boots in Wokingham Market Place.
The next day the group, some as young as 13, agreed they had not had a bad night
because it was fairly mild and dry. But sleeping rough is not something they would
want to do again in a hurry. One sleeper had really been homeless in Wokingham for
around eight years before being helped by Shelter. He agreed to join the CARITAS
supporters to show solidarity—and advised them to sleep with their shoes IN their
sleeping bags to avoid them being pinched. A cardboard box is not really a very good

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