Community Yearbook 2020

Newbury Weekly News

Thursday, 16 January, 2020

Narrow escape as sign crashes down

Sheltering the homeless

A NEWBURY business- woman described the horrifying moment an old pub sign came crashing down “like a guillotine” and missed one of her clients by inches. The old Clock Tower Inn, in the Broadway, closed in 2009 – but the sign was still there. The drama took place as shoppers walked by. Steph Williams, who runs the vegan VARA Tattoo Studio, witnessed the incident and said the sign had fallen from its metal frame before hitting the street 15 feet below. She said: “I was counting my blessings that nobody was underneath it when it came down. “It would have sliced straight through someone. “I was stood outside and my client was walking towards me. Just by pure luck she stopped to put her phone in her pocket and then it

From a series taken at Greenham Common Peace Camp during the mid-1980s

with office space to assist homeless people on a one-to-

PEOPLEmade some noise for Thatcham’s Community Orchard at a wassailing event. The wassailing tradition involves a ceremony of singing and drinking the health of the trees, normally performed on Twelfth Night, to help them thrive. The term wassail comes from the old Norse‘ ves heil’ meaning ‘be you healthy’. Around 100 people gathered to sing and make noise to scare off evil spirits from the trees, accompanied by the Kennet Morris Men. The proceedings were over- seen by wassail queen Erin Carpenter, aged seven, and king Edgar Ash, aged four, who were selected by mayor A FORMER Newbury snooker club was transformed into a night shelter for rough sleepers across the district. West Berkshire Homeless ran the shelter, located at 1 West Street. The shelter, which was open between 6pm and 8am, accommodated up to 20 individuals, with separate washing, showering, toileting and sleeping areas for men and women, and served light meals. It also provided the charity

Peace Camp r evisited

one basis and a secure storage area for clients’ personal possessions.

AN exhibition of photographs of the Greenham peace camps – Common People – went on show for three months at the Control Tower. Lin Wilkinson wrote: “The black-and-white photographs, by Wendy Carrig, now an established freelance photogra- pher, were taken on film in 1985, when she was a photography student, and have now been digitally scanned and printed. Alongside them is a panel of the photographer’s contact prints, always key to understanding the processes of selection and contextual approach. “The history of the Greenham peace women, who campaigned against the siting of US cruise missiles on the base, is now part of the narrative of the Cold War, included in academic histories, but here the photographer focuses on the domestic life of the women, their day-to-day existence, rather than on the protests they carried out. Of the 17 photographs on show, only one, Keep Death Off the Road , of placard-carrying figures shot in harsh, contre-jour light, shows a protest. Carrig, recently nominated as one of the Royal Photographic Society’s #Hundred Heroines, has an acute eye, and a strong, yet pleasingly- oblique sense of composition, which lends the photographs a sense of informality. What appears candid, however, is the result of creative intent and control. Here we see the daily life of the women; cooking, folding up bedclothes, sitting round fires, sheltering under tarpaulins, and making music. Several of the photographs were shot in hard frost, with ice and snow on the ground, so that what comes across is the bitter cold, the discomfort, and the grit the women showed, their determination to be witnesses and active opponents of nuclear weapons and the masculine realpolitik of the Cold War.”

It was the second time in as many years that West Berk- shire Homeless, established in February 2017, operated a night shelter for the district’ s

homeless community. The charity provided a lifeline to many rough

sleepers when it opened one at the Salvation Army hall, in Northcroft Lane, in December 2017.

crashed to the ground. “It can’t have missed her by more than eight inches. “There were lots of other people walking around. “Everyone just stopped and looked at each other saying ‘oh my god’.”

Mrs Williams said she wanted to highlight the danger of poorly-maintained signs. “The sign was in a very poor condition and the metal frame was broken,” she said. “The wooden sign was rotting and just fell.”

Wassailers make a racket

Many Clouds memorial GRAND National-winning horse Many Clouds , who the people of Lambourn took to their hearts, was commemorated with a decorative iron bench. It was officially declared open by Chris ‘CJ’ Jerdin, the groom who cared for him at trainer Oliver Sherwood’s Rhonehurst yard. Mr Jerdin cut a ribbon at the specially- prepared site at the corner of Newbury Street and Station Road on Friday. Many Clouds , who won the 2015 Grand National, collapsed and died moments after beating Thistlecrack in a thrilling finish at Cheltenham in January 2017.

of Thatcham Jan Cover. The event was organised by the Berkshire, Bucking- hamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust in conjunction with Thatcham Community Orchard.

Groom CJ Jerdin at the Many Clouds memorial

NEWBURY RECLAIM We have a policy of re-homing and re-using as much as is possible from each collection. We clear office equipment, computers, furniture. Commercial vacant possession can also include carpet and window dressing collection. We can prepare or clean a property for renovation or re-use after clearing out at a POA basis. This extends to outside buildings, units, sites, gardens, garages etc. We are discreet confidential with all our clients at all times. 07799 577 456 7 St Mary’s Rd, Newbury, Berks RG14 1ES paul339@btinternet.com www.newburyreclaim.com