Hungerford Arcade has many friends and one of them is a dear friend of Arcade co-owner, Adrian Gilmour.  David Clayton.  David is Chairman of The Community of Hungerford Theatre Company.  A few years ago the Company put on a fantastic evening show in the square inside the Arcade.  Hopefully, they will be performing with us in the not too distant future.  You can see them in their fantastic new show The Three Musketeers on Friday & Saturday, 27th & 28th August (see below for details).

David & Adrian

The Community of Hungerford Theatre Company exists to excel in the presentation of amateur theatrical productions and the performing arts in and around Hungerford. Starting as the Town Show in 1978 (from an inspired idea of John Miles and the late Don Bolton) the first performance was in February 1980. The Company has since grown way beyond the aspirations of it’s founders and now includes five groups of performers, directors and staging crew with an age range from 6 years to 60+ years. Our objectives have not changed that much since the start and they are as follows:

“to foster and develop interest and participation in amateur live theatre in the community of Hungerford and the surrounding area”

See more from their wonderful website here

Buy your tickets here

Hungerford Arcade has many very interesting customers and David Hirst is one of them.  David is a watercolour artist who specialises in bringing memories to life from photographs of family members, pets or magical holiday places.

David is the person to go to if you would like your precious memories brought back to life.  You can contact David by email on dahirstxyz@gmail.com.  Unfortunately, David does not have a website, but you can see his brochure below.

Hungerford Arcade is delighted to have heard from our great friend Stuart Miller-Osborne.  Read all about his latest find below.

Hello again

One of the things that I miss about Hungerford is not being able to pop into the Arcade whenever I feel like doing so.

As some of you know, I am closer to France (around 25 miles) than Hungerford (at a guess 100/200 miles) and because of this I do not have the opportunity to pursue one of my favourite pastimes of browse and find which is short for browsing without any specific aim in mind.  In a way it is like beachcombing.  You never know what you might find apart from pebbles, dead fish and even more pebbles.  If I listed all the things I have come across in the Arcade (and frequently purchased) then it would be like Prime Minister’s Question Time – boring and never ending!

Down here in East Kent one can find interesting things but these are sadly few and far between.  Charity shops seem to think that if anything is over 50 years old then it is massively valuable, which is not always the case.  There are antique shops in the area, which range from the very expensive to ones that are much more reasonable.  This makes it all the more challenging, but just as much fun, as occasionally you find something really interesting, which was the case the other day.

I had not trotted into town thinking about earthquakes even though this part of England is on a plate that I believe originates in Belgium.  But by the time I had trotted back, these awful natural disasters were very much on my mind.

The reason for this was that I had found an incredibly interesting booklet called “The Great Earthquake” which detailed the catastrophic earthquake that struck the Izu Peninsula Yokohama, and shortly after Tokyo, at noon on 1st September 1923.

I had obviously heard of this earthquake and that thousands of people were sadly killed but I was totally unaware of the smaller details which this booklet detailed in the extreme.  It had been printed as a record of the reports in the Japan Chronicle (the date of the booklet was unclear but, at a guess, I would have thought it was produced soon afterwards).

When natural disasters happen many miles distant from our shore, there is sadly a tendency to dismiss them (even in this age of 24/7 coverage) and I wonder how this awful earthquake was viewed in 1923.  There were really only the newspapers in 1923 which would have carried the reports of the disaster but not much more.  And because of this the detail in this publication is quite stunning, as short and long reports have been lifted from the pages of the Japan Chronicle and reproduced.

On the first page alone it notes that the Imperial Palace in Yokohama was on fire. (history tells us that the whole of Yokohama and three quarters of Tokyo were destroyed by fire).  Refugees were reported to be sheltering in parks and that communication with London and other major cities was more or less non existent.  Other pages reveal the fate of diplomatic staff and the state of the Tokyo embassies (it was reported that the American embassy was burnt down but the Ambassador and his wife were safe).  This said, a member of staff in Yokohama, Miss Doris Babbitt, was killed and there were many others reported missing or dead.  Princes are reported dead as well as nameless others by the thousand.  This makes grim reading.

On a more positive note, ships carrying refugees are identified with the names, where possible, of who was on board (an interesting note is that most of the names were European in origin)

 The booklet also contains a number of photographs which detail the destruction caused by the earthquake and the confusion afterwards.

Another interesting item is a newspaper cutting that was attached to my booklet dating from the 23rd March 1932, which notes the retirement of a certain Captain Samuel Robinson, who provided great relief in Yokohama at the time of the 1923 earthquake.  It is reported that Captain Robinson and his ship The Empress of Australia rescued a great number of survivors from the burning harbour at Yokohama and was further involved in the relief effort in the days following the disaster.  What makes this even more haunting is that less than ten years later, the free world was at war with Japan and thirteen years later the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In a way it a window into Japan in the 1920s, which for most of us living nearly a century later is something of a mystery unless you are a student of the subject.  

I have not looked but I would imagine that somewhere on the internet there is a copy of this small publication.  It will probably be a year and a day before I find an item as interesting as this (unless I make it back to Hungerford and the Arcade).  And to think I nearly missed it, as it was partially hidden in a pile of of pretty ancient knitting magazines and under a very tatty copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull (which I also purchased for my daughter to read).

That is the beauty of browse and find as you do not know what you will find next.

Happy Hunting

Stuart

To All our Customers

GREAT NEWS!!  Earlier than expected, we are now fully open and serving hot and cold food, coffee, tea, cold drinks cakes and more.

Come along and join us in our beautiful garden area to the rear of the Arcade or upstairs in our Cosy Coffee Shop lounge.

A warn welcome awaits you from Mandi, Ray, Barbara

and all the team at the Cosy Coffee Shop.

Hungerford Arcade staff and customers can rely on the Wednesday Market coming to town every week.  We stock up on fresh bread and cakes, cheese, eggs and more.  We buy all our fruit and vegetables from the most amazing fruit and veg stall.  Everything is so fresh and delicious.

The fruit and veg stall is very different to what most people are used to.  You just grab a basket and work your way around the different tables, chose your own fruit and vegetables and the quantity you require as you go along.  When finished, you just go the end, get it all weighed and pay your money.  It is amazing how much you can get for a fiver.  I had a big bowl of delicious bananas for just £1!  Best of all, it is right outside the Arcade.

Adrian was doing his usual weekly shop at the market when he met Lucy from the fruit & veg stall.  They got talking and she told him that she is going skydiving in two weeks time to raise lots of money for charity in memory of her grandfather.  What a wonderful, scary thing to do.  Good luck Lucy!

Work is steaming ahead with our new coffee shop.  Mandi, her dad Ray and mum Barbara are working very hard both inside and outside in the garden area to get the Cosy Coffee Shop ready to open and have penned the following message to bring all their customers upto date with progress.

To All our Customers

A warn welcome to you from all the team at the Cosy Coffee Shop.

From Friday, 9th July, we will have a reduced service and will only be serving hot/cold drinks and an assortment of delicious home made cakes whilst we prepare for our opening day on Tuesday, 20th July.

With thanks, Mandi, Ray, Barbara and the rest of the team.

Hungerford Arcade is full of thousands of items, from sublime rare antiques to everyday items of no apparent particular significance.  One such item was this ginger beer bottle from A Matthews of Elm Park Road, Reading.

Available from Avril in unit 13, it is a piece of local history as A. Matthews ceased trading in the 1960s.  The Matthews family had a mineral water factory.  In the 1920s they manufactured soft drinks and bottled many different flavours of fruit juces and mineral waters.  A particular line was ginger beer.  During the war, they had the first Pepsi Cola franchise in the UK and delivered to the US Army stationed at Bicester.  So far, just another old bottle….

However, to Alison Clapson it is so much more than that.  She was delighted to find it, as it is part of her family history.  Alison’s maiden name is Matthews and her Dad’s cousin owned the factory.  It was wonderful to be able to reunite her with a memento from her family’s past.

That’s the joy of the Arcade, you never know when you’ll find unexpected treasure!