Page 987 - Reading Mercury

Cllr. A.G. Skedgel, chairman of the Town Council’s Highways Committee, knew
nothing of the failure on Friday of last week when questioned by our reporter. He
promised to raise the matter at next week’s committee meeting.

th
Sat 16 Oct
MULTI-POINT PLAN FOR THE FUTURE WOKINGHAM
The 400-strong Wokingham Society which has been acting watchdog over the
town’s affairs since its formation two years ago has embarked on its biggest task yet
to help retain some of the character of the old market town against increasing pressure
from modern development. Under a general heading, “Wokingham in the Future,” the
society is setting out to plot, stage by stage, the growth of the town as its members see
it in the years to come.
The work is being undertaken by the traffic and planning section, and at the moment
it seems unlikely that the Plan will meet with anything but approval by the local
authorities. Many of the suggestions put forward tentatively at a meeting last week
could be immediate improvements to the appearance of the town centre; others, less
easily defined, will not be effective until the proposed ring road in constructed and the
Market Place becomes a traffic-free precinct.
Few of the sub-headings of The Plan will rouse any controversy, apart, perhaps,
from the society’s idea of the eventual size of the town.
Society’s chairman, Mr. Anthony Cross, stressed the point that its aims were not
simply to preserve Wokingham in its present form. To “retain the best of the old and
encourage the best of the new” is almost a password, and it is significant that the new
development gets no more than a cursory glance in The Plan’s multi-point references.
The work will be a winter exercise in detailed planning, and early next year Mr.
Cross hopes to present a full report to the society.
Heading the list of improvements for immediate consideration are traffic
arrangements, unnecessary street “furniture,” such as road signs, lamp-posts and
illuminated shop signs, and the provision of trees along some of the major shopping
streets. Other points include the layout of Rose Street—one of the proposed through-
roads in the ring-road scheme—and the implications of the M4 route, are all long-
term analysis.
The detailed line of the M4 has yet to be published, but already the society has
appointed a “task force” to jump into action immediately the planners have finished
“The trouble with planning matters is that so often things are inter-dependant. It
isn’t possible to reach a conclusion on one thing because it may be affected by
something completely different which is still in the planning stages. What we hope to
do is work on improvements which we think could be possible immediately, and at
the same time formulate an idea of what the town should be like in the future.”

th
Sat 18 Dec
PRESENTATION TO MISS EFFIE BARKER
Miss Effie Barker whose name is synonymous with fox-hunting in Berkshire, was
thanked for her services to hunting at a meet of the Garth and South Berks hounds on
Saturday. Presenting Miss Barker with an inscribed gold wrist-watch, a cheque, and a
book containing the names of subscribers to the gifts, Mr. Reginald Palmer – at whose
home, Hurst Grove, Twyford, this lawn-meet took place – referred to Miss Barker’s
mastership and joint-mastership of the Garth and South Berks over a period of 29
years, except for the time during the war when she was in Germany with the British

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