Lecture on “Old Caversham”

LECTURE ON “OLD CAVERSHAM” BY MR. W. WING View of Caversham from Reading Abbey Reprinted from the Reading Mercury and Berks County Paper. The following Lecture on the History of Caversham from very early times was delivered by Mr. W. Wing in the National School-room, Caversham, on Monday evening, November 12th, 1894. The Rev. C. W. H. Kenrick, the Vicar, was in the chair. The Lecture was illustrated by a number of interesting relics, pictures, parochial documents, &c., and at the close General Radcliffe proposed, and Mr. D. Haslam seconded, a hearty vote of thanks to Mr. Wing for his very interesting and com- prehensive lecture. This version of Mr Wing’s work was transcribed from a printed copy of the lecture held by the Caversham branch of Reading Public Library (L 942.293). All of the text from the original work has been preserved but changes have been made in the formatting; short quotes have been italicised and street names have been put in the modern form. The spelling in the original document has been kept and so have the original para- graphs. Any illustrations were added by the modern-day editor, the original booklet contains none. The print in the original booklet is very small. It is hoped that as well as making the document more widely available this version will also be easier to read. 1 OLD CAVERSHAM HE PRESENT TIME seems particularly opportune for calling attention to the history of this parish, because with the end of the year a new depar- T ture takes place. The old civil parish of Caversham extending from the river Thames to the borders of Checkendon, some six miles, will be divided, the northern portion becoming a separate parish under the designation of Kid- more. This change from a state of things which has existed for a longer period than can be accurately ascertained is likely to prove beneficial to the inhabi- tants of the newly created parish, but it is a decided parting of the ways, and in speaking of Caversham I propose to treat of the whole parish, as it has hitherto existed instead of limiting myself to the smaller district which will hereafter be known us the parish of Caversham. It is generally understood that ours is a place without a history, and truly the iconoclast has so thoroughly done his work that there are very few outward signs of antiquity or interest; but a very little research amongst the archives will reveal the fact that there is ample material for an unusually interesting local history. The old parish of Caversham and neighbouring parishes I will first allude to three points which are often mentioned with respect to the parish. First, that there is preserved in the church a proclamation of King James I. appointing certain days for persons diseased with the evil to receive the royal touch. As to this I can only say that neither the late Mr. Bennett, Mr. Molineux, nor our present Vicar, Mr. Kenrick, ever heard of any such document, and how the statement originated it is impossible to discover. In looking up matters for this lecture I have learned for the first time that the prayer books of as late a date as the reign of Queen Anne, contained a form of prayer for the ceremony of touching for the evil. Secondly, all the guide books (and you know how accurate such books always are) say that the old mansion in Caversham Park where Charles I. was in turn a visitor, and a prisoner, stood 2 nearer to the river than the present mansion, and the statement is repeated in Mrs. Climenson’s recently published History of Shiplake. I have traced its origin in the description of a visit paid by Queen Anne, wife of James I., to Caversham Park, but the context makes it fairly clear that the expression nearer to the Thames merely meant a few feet to the south of the present site i.e., slightly lower on the hill and not anywhere near the river, which is a mile and a quarter away. A third statement often gravely propounded to the effect that there was formerly an underground passage from Reading Abbey to Caversham Park scarcely needs comment; the engineers of the middle ages, skillful as they were, did not venture on the construction of Thames tunnels. Caversham today is a very different place to the Caversham of 50 years ago, as although in a different county the village is practically a suburb of the Borough of Reading, to which it yearly becomes more united by the rapidity of building operations. Before the construction of the Great Western Railway there were no houses or buildings between Greyfriars Church and Caversham Bridge; the road across the valley running between open ditches and having no lamps at night to guide the traveller on his way. As to the village itself, the old buildings now remaining give indication of the former rural character of the place. Bridge Street was a narrow inconvenient thoroughfare with a few houses on ei- ther side; Church Road and Church Street were very much as they are now, but Prospect Street was an entirely open road until reaching Little End, at which point one of the old thatched cottages still standing was the village school. In the direction of Lower Caversham there were practically no houses if we except the Fox and Hounds public house, between where Mr. Holt’s shop now stands and the corner of Mill Road, beyond which the extent of the little hamlet can be easily conjectured by noting the old cottages still existing. Previous to the year 1834 the road above the Prince of Wales leading to Emmer Green was little better than a track across the open unenclosed arable land which went by the name of Balmers Fields. The parish pound, village stocks and pillory stood at the corner now occupied by Caversham Free Church, and were afterwards removed to what is now the junction of Short Street with Prospect Street. The transfor- mation which has come over the old village is being intensified every day, and soon it will only he possible to trace the old condition with the aid of the parish maps. I cannot help regretting the disappearance of many old land-marks and the total absence of any sense of admiration for the picturesque evinced in the majority of our new developments. Where to begin a local history is rather a difficult question, but I cannot do better than follow the example of Colonel Cooper Kim, who, in his History of Berks, devotes the first chapter to the geological condition and Archaic history of the country, and as many of his remarks apply exactly to the conditions existing at Caversham I cannot do better than quote the following: “Man naturally followed the lines marked out by the river, both to avoid the dangers and difficulties of the dense forests and to procure water. Of food vessels there are no traces or remains anywhere. So few and scattered are his relics, so far apart, are found the groups of his rude implements that it seems to point to the conclusion that he was weak in numbers, both in family and in population In so hard a life only the fittest survived, and possibly his mistrust of living things extended to his brother men, as well as to the fierce beasts of the chase. His habits may well have been those of a family gathering rather 3 than those of a community. The commune is only possible with mutual trust that implies a higher form of life. But little removed from the beast he slew for food, he was savage, though a man. One can expect little art from him. At Reading, in the gravel pit at Grovelands, in those at Pangbourne, and in those behind Wasing Place, near Midgham, are rude flakes, scrapers, and ovate or pointed axes, roughly chipped, associated with teeth and bones of mammoth, rhinoceros and bos*. They vary in length from four to eight inches, and may have been held in the bare hand or fixed in a cleft stick as a weapon little better than a stone club. They are found in local groups, not scattered broadcast throughout long ranges of these river gravel beaches, but just now and then where there may have been a sheltered hollow or backwater, by the side of which the man could live.” Flint implements from Toot’s Farm Flint implements, such as there described, have been found in the gravel pit near the entrance to Toot’s Farm, and teeth, or more correctly speaking molars, with bones of the Mammoth discovered in the pit near the Henley Road. These specimens are carefully preserved in the Reading Museum. I cannot pass away from this part of the subject without alluding to the remarkable geological fea- tures of the parish where the student can find the gravel drifts mentioned in the quotation just read; the bed of Reading clay with its overlying springs of pure water and wonderful fossil deposits at Emmer Green and the huge section of chalk shown in Mr. Simonds’s pit near the church. These would in themselves form material for an extended paper. The derivation of the word Caversham is a puzzling matter, especially as in old documents the word is very variously spelt. For instance, in the will of Lady Kildare dated 1707, there is a bequest to the parish or town of Cawsham alias Caversham, and another deed preserved in the parish chest speaks of the place in the same way, as Cawsham, as do many old maps.

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