In the days before home entertainment as a treat, children used to be taken to the Odeon in the nearest large town to see what their parents thought they would like.  Usually this was a dreaded Disney movie and my childhood was just the same.  We were often taken to Bath or Trowbridge to see Uncle Walt’s latest offering.

For some reason, from an early age, they used to bore me and as I watched the confectionary on the screen I longed for the French New Wave or Ingmar Bergman.  But my protests fell on deaf ears and I was told not to be ungrateful in no uncertain terms by my Nan after enduring That Darn Cat in 1965.

As I was tall for my age, I was able to see X rated movies from the age of thirteen onwards (not that the staff really cared in those days). At first it was Clint in the Spaghetti Westerns and then as I matured, I made the step upwards and started watching the movies of Bergman and the directors of the New Wave in France.  As you can imagine, these were thin on the ground and I went as far as Bristol to see these movies.  I am not saying that I was mature but there was something in my DNA which preferred more adult themes in movies.

And then disaster struck, as just a few months after seeing Bonnie and Clyde, I was told that I would have to take both my brother and sister plus a couple of loathed cousins to see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the Trowbridge Odeon.  Naturally I protested, but as my father financed most of my football trips I had to give in.  So with the worry that my street cred would be forever harmed, I made the three-mile journey to Trowbridge just before Christmas in 1968.  I had travelled with the intention of hating the movie and was not disappointed as although it was not a Disney production, it might as well have been.  Thankfully, it was the last film for children that I had to endure as my parents had began to notice my arty ways.

I never had occasion to see the movie again, although there have been endless repeats on TV over the years and I believe there was a stage version a few years ago.  That was until today, some fifty years later, when in the youth of my old age, I wandered into the Arcade to look for a car for one of my grandchildren as I knew that there was a chest full in a unit near the front door.  I had purchased the occasional four wheeled friend from it before and what I liked about this unassuming chest was that the vehicles within were in all states of repair.  This for some reason takes me back to my childhood when like all boys, I had a large collection of Dinky, Corgi and Matchbox toys which were normally kept in a wooden box.  These toys constituted a large part of the games you played at the time and served as competitors in the Monte Carlo Rally and ambulances during the large scale wars that you fought between the greenhouse and the path that led to the canal.  Like all toys, these models had a lifespan and usually disappeared under the Hydrangeas or were secretly disposed of by one’s parents after Rover had started eating them during one of his more lucid moments.  I can confidently say that not one of my cars followed me into adulthood.

But now I own a model car, or at least the shell of a model car, as whilst searching though the chest for a car for my grandson, I found it.  And guess what?  it is the car from the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang movie and to be truthful, I rather like it.  As you can see from the photos I have taken, it appears that the passengers of the unfortunate car have met Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as, with the exception of Jemima Potts, they have all lost their heads and Truly Scrumptious has disappeared altogether.  I would imagine that at some stage since 1968, a ferocious child decided that the occupants of the car would look better without their heads and removed them for some reason with his mothers best scissors.   This poor model has gone through the wars and because of that, just seems more lived in and more a memory of childhood.

Just across the passage in the Arcade, there are some wonderful Corgi and Dinky models in tip top condition.  These are very collectable and are available at reasonable prices and I know that there is a great deal of interest in them.   But to me, the bashed up old Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is all I want as it has taken me back to a time when I was between childhood and adulthood.   I still like foreign movies, though it is likely that my grandchildren will condemn me to watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang sometime in the future, unless I run away to South America.

However, before I go, here are five facts that I discovered whilst researching this article

1. The movie was shot in locations such as Bavaria and St Tropez.

2. Six Chitty Chitty Bang Bangs were created for the movie.

3. Heather Ripley, who played Jemima Potts, was once arrested at Faslane Nuclear Submarine Base and was jailed for some fifteen hours.

4. Dick Van Dyke, who is now ninety-three, appeared recently in the remake of Mary Poppins.

5. Sally Anne Howes who played Truly Scrumptious, made her first movie in 1943 and was once contracted to the Rank Organisation.

Happy Hunting

Stuart Miller-Osborne

I have long thought that most of the romance has gone out of travelling by ship.  These days when cruises are advertised they are slick with a television star clowning around on a fictional cruise somewhere in the world.  Obviously, these ads work as there is a healthy industry in these leisure activities but it was not always like this.  Before the advent of commercial air travel, if you wanted to visit Australia or South Africa or even India to name but three, then you would have had to travel by ship.  If you want to travel to any of these countries today, then you just jump on a long haul flight and you are there in a matter of hours.  The world is a smaller place and travel has changed beyond recognition.  But it was not always like that and this was confirmed by a small find of mine at an antiques fair recently.

I had not gone to the Corn Exchange with the intention of buying anything, but just to look around and get back into the swing of Hungerford time having been away for a couple of weeks.  In truth, Caron and I were rather travelled out and just wanted a little bit of us time after bombing around in both England and France.  Rather like the Arcade you are never quite sure what you are going to find at the Hungerford Antiques Fair.

By the time we arrived the fair was beginning to wrap up, but I noticed a table of ephemera almost as soon as I entered the hall.  There were a number of interesting items for sale but it was a collection of items from a long forgotten ship (she was scrapped in Scotland in 1947) that took my fancy.  In essence my find consisted of two menus and a souvenir of a voyage of the TSS Themistocles dating from the early 1920s.

The menus (which both have a illustration of the handsome ship on their covers) are both dated and are treasures of social history on their own.  The older one dates from 20^th of March 1922, which happened to be a Sunday.  It is a dinner menu offering such delights as Veal Cutlets and Bacon, Cod Roe on Toast (there was much more on offer and I have resisted mentioning the Haricot Beans a la Bretonne or the Macedoine of Fruit in an effort not to highlight my lack of knowledge on what these dishes actually are).  This dinner was also accompanied by a programme of music which ranged from a selection of Sullivan to The Quaker Girl.

The second menu is dated from the 28^th of April 1923 and is a kids menu.  (It proves to me, that in those days, parents actually took their little darlings on voyages with them instead of putting as many miles as possible between them and their children, which is normally the case these days).  The menu was rather grandly titled “The Children’s Tea Party”, but there was not a super hero burger or a Disney ice cream to be found anywhere on it.  Instead, the next generation were treated to Alaska Salmon followed by Roast Sirloin of Beef with Duchesse Potatoes and finished off with Pears a la Reine and Chantilly Baskets to name but two of the selections.

As I wrote this, the thought came to me that a number of these children would have been in adulthood when the Second World War started in 1939.  I wonder if any of them during those wretched years looked back on the tea party with an affection for their long lost days.

Apart from the menus, the other item that came with the pack was a rather eccentric Souvenier of the Voyage which was compiled and printed on board ship by a J.H Wright who was the ships printer (a first for me as I had never considered that ships had printers).  It contained a complete account of the voyage of  TSS Themistocles from Australia to England and is terribly British in its content in an era when our great empire was on its last legs.  But to read from this small booklet, one would have thought that we were at the height of empire.

It starts off with a humorous apology from the printer for the content of the thin booklet and is followed by a light hearted account of the voyage detailing such wonders as the Themistocles Social and Athletics Club’s concert programme of the 30^th of April and followed by a number of rather obscure jokes whose humour has been lost in the mists of time.  The next delight was the First Class Sports Prize Winners (Freemantle to Durban), rapidly followed by the Third Class Prize Winners (Freemantle to Durban) and other lists.

It was while reading these accounts that I found the answer to a question that had been nagging at me for years.  How did a small country such as ours run a great overseas empire for so many years when these days, we are so confused and divided over things such a Brexit and Uncle Donald across the pond?  There were poor leaders in those days and politics were just as muddled as they are today so nothing has changed there.  But in those days, we had committees for everything from the plans for the village fete to the First Class Sports Committee on board the TSS Themistocles.

Attribution 3.0 Australia (CC BY 3.0 AU)

To me, whether right or wrong, the secret of empire was committees.  A simple ten letter word which contains a rather attractive character structure.  This was what I had been looking for for many years and this little booklet from the TSS Themistocles had enlightened me.  But seriously, this souvenir of the voyage was really just Blue Remembered Hills and nothing else.  It was a moment in time recorded nearly one hundred years ago and detailing a world that has sadly vanished forever.  I would like to think that if we scratched the surface of anyone living on this island we would find a committee member underneath.  But I am not so sure as the world has changed so much.  There is a new world order and whilst Britain (when it is not tearing itself apart from within) has an important part to play, but we are no longer the power we once were.

At the time of the voyages of the TSS Themistocles, the world had just emerged from a catastrophic war.  The awful Soviet machine was about to move forward and an obscure artist was beginning to make waves in Germany.  But, you would not have thought this on reading the literature from the Themistocles as all seemed well with the world.  I am not saying that the booklet should have contained Owen’s grim poems or Eliot’s Wasteland, but my overriding feeling when reading it is that this is an account of a lost generation who were running away from the horrors of a recent war but blindly into an even greater conflict.  I may be wrong, but there is something very Waugh like in the tone of this small publication and this is why a find such as this is so important as it gives me a short mirror into the past when times were far more volatile than they are now.  This most probably accounts for the light hearted tone of the publication.  There were no long haul flights in those days and people who travelled long distances by ship did so for a good reason.   So why not have fun along the way no matter what was happening elsewhere.

I have noted that the RSS Themistocles was scrapped in 1947 after just thirty-seven years at sea.  She was named after a Athenian statesman and was a 11,200 tonne ocean liner built for the Aberdeen Line (1825-1957) and was launched in September 1910.  In her lifetime, she sailed the London to Australia route (via Cape Town) which took some forty days.

During World War One she saw service as a troop ship and was involved in convoy duties during World War Two.  The Aberdeen Line sold her to the Shaw Savill and Albion Line in 1932 where she lasted for another fifteen years before she was scrapped.  Quite why she was scrapped at such a young age is a mystery to me as she appears to have made it through the second conflict unscathed.  She was on the Australian run throughout her life and it is likely that in the austerity of post war Britain, it was no longer economic to run her.  Apart from the economics, it might have been that the Themistocles was considered an old ship that was past its sell by date.  As you can see,  I am only guessing as without researching the subject that is all I have.  I quite often sit on Deal Beach and watch the ferries travel between England and France and wonder how long they will actually last.

One can travel by train under the channel in thirty-five minutes and be in Southern France or most European cities in a matter of hours.  To me, they seem to be a blast from the past and I would not be surprised to see them fade a little.  The Marine Railway Station at Dover is no longer used and the hovercraft service from Ramsgate is also a thing of the past.  Most people fly and one can travel to Australia quite quickly.

My wife and I plan to visit this beautiful country quite soon and obviously will have to fly there, but as I stare out of the window of the plane thousands of feet above nowhere, I will think of the Themistocles and her voyages to Australia and back.  I will think of the menus and the sports committees of a fine ship which is sadly no longer with us.

The TSS Themistocles may be gone but a couple of her menus are still around as well as the souvenir of her voyages which, I suppose, is better than nothing.

Happy Hunting

Stuart Miller-Osborne

Hungerford Arcade – Unit 46

Hungerford Arcade send our congratulations to Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins and everyone at NASA on the 50th  anniversary of not just landing on the moon, but actually walking on the moon.  I remember it well with everyone excitedly glued to the television screens watching this unique event live, as it happened.  That  also was a remarkable feat as it was beamed live around the world.

After being sent to the Moon by the Saturn V’s third stage, the astronauts separated the spacecraft from it and travelled for three days until they entered lunar orbit. Armstrong and Aldrin then moved into Eagle and landed in the Sea of Tranquility. The astronauts used Eagle‘s ascent stage to lift off from the lunar surface and rejoin Mike Collins in the command module. They jettisoned Eagle before they performed the maneuvers that propelled the ship out of the last of its 30 lunar orbits on a trajectory back to Earth.  They returned to Earth and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24 after more than eight days in space.

Armstrong’s first step onto the lunar surface was broadcast on live TV to a worldwide audience. He described the event as “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

NASA/Apollo 11 [Public domain]

Apollo 11 effectively ended the Space Race and fulfilled a national goal proposed in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy:   “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”

Hungerford Arcade have the most amazing visitors.  When a very handsome Viking arrived, everyone was in awe of him.  Ben Phillips is a very talented young man.  He was in Robin Hood with Russell Crowe shooting real and explosive fire bow and arrows.

                                                 Lucky Rita with Viking, Ben Phillips

Ben is a Viking through and through, of that there is no doubt.  He is also a weapons restorer from flintlocks to artillery pieces.  At the moment, one of Ben’s projects is working on a WWI Austrian field gun, but before he could start,  had to go on a journey to Austria for the blue prints.

Also, Ben is working at the Covent Garden Opera House on lighting and special effects and when he says “special effects”,  you can guarantee that they will be explosive!

It was great meeting you Ben and hope you come back soon.

Hungerford Arcade woke this morning to the sound of drumming.  Paul Midgley of Twin Wave CIC was conducting a workshop on the Town Hall steps as part of the Hungerford Summer Festival.

Everyone was feeling the rhythm, especially Erin, Hattie and Oscar who are percussion stars in the making!

We look forward to hearing more from them during the carnival procession this afternoon.  Come and help us celebrate all things Hungerford!!

Hungerford Arcade had a nice surprise when Tanya Allen came with her mother.  Tanya owns the Allenova School of Dancing which has several studios in Berkshire.

The Allenova School of Dancing in Berkshire was first founded in 1985 by Miss Tanya Allen and her mother. They opened their first school in Tilehurst, Reading and have since expanded to locations in Thatcham, Earley and Newbury. The school has grown from just two pupils to having over 450 dance students, many of whom have gone on to develop professional dancing careers.   Tanya said, “We have a 100% success rate with the RAD (Royal Academy of Dance) ballet examination and many students go on to win scholarships to prestigious dance schools in the UK”.

                        Tanya with her mother and Arcade co-owner Adrian Gilmour (in his ballet pose)

“Anyone can learn to dance.” said Tanya.   “With our experienced and professional dance instructors!  The Allenova School of Dancing in Berkshire has been operating for over 33 years. Our academy boasts some of the most highly trained dance teachers in the area. No matter what your age or skill level we can help you discover the magic of dance!”  

You can find out more about the Allenova School of Dancing and see the wonderful pictures by clicking on this link to their website. 

Small Finds Eight

This is the eighth of a small series of articles in which I will discuss items that I have either purchased or just seen when visiting antique establishments in Hungerford and elsewhere.

Aldermaston Signal Box

Apart from the actual trains themselves what has also appeared to have vanished from our railway network in the last few years?

Signal Boxes

Indeed, there is only one in operation on the Berks & Hants line between Reading and Taunton, or so I am led to believe.  They were very common place up to a few years ago, but as the signalling became automated the need for signal boxes decreased dramatically.  We used to have one or two here at Hungerford but they are all gone (one of these boxes was actually demolished during a derailment in 1971).  I rather like signal boxes as there is something timeless about them.  A kettle always on the stove and the hollow sound of the bells warning of trains and the window boxes full of flowers.   Small gardens could also be found.  These boxes would be manned by railwaymen who had been on the railways for over twenty-five years and knew the line like the rooms of their house.  But whilst I have painted a nostalgic rose tinted picture of signal boxes and the signalmen their job was vitally important.

If an error was made in the box then this could have serious consequences and because of this the shelves in these signal boxes were full of small books noting the companies rules and regulations and working practices as well as other railway related publications.  Ignore them at your peril.  One has only to read about the Quintinshill disaster in 1915 and the Radstock crash in 1876 (to name but two) to see that sloppy working practices and the general ignorance of company instructions could lead to a significant loss of life.

Why am I writing about signal boxes you might ask?  Well, the answer is that I recently picked up a copy of the British Railways Regulations for Train Signalling and Signalmen’s General Instructions dating from October 1972.  As you can imagine it is full of the general working practices associated with signalling from the details of Bell Signals on page 4 to the disciplines required for Royal Trains on page 166.  It was the signalman’s bible and as you would expect, has extra inserts for practices such as single line working added.  I have read some of the detail in my small soft back copy and I can assure you that it is rather heavy going even if you are interested in the railways.  Apart from a general interest in railway ephemera, another reason why I picked the book up was that it at some time belonged to the signal box in nearby Aldermaston.  It was nice to think that this small piece of railway history would have sat in the box whilst trains to and from the West Country roared by.

The book would have been a witness to the general life in the signal box which I find very interesting as it has all but disappeared.  I rather like Aldermaston and the station itself.   It is located not far from the A4 and only a stones throw from the wharf.

As was the practice in Victorian times, it’s location is some distance from the actual village but it would have been very busy at the time of the CND marches some fifty years ago (and I would imagine might have shown up on some of the newsreels at the time).  The station which was opened in 1847 had for many years rather attractive chalet style buildings (similar to those that have been retained at Mortimer on the Basingstoke line).  Like most stations, it had a goods yard (which closed in 1965) and unlike other local stations, traces of this facility can still be seen.  The actual station buildings were demolished without any thought probably during the 1960s/1970s and the result is the rather scruffy station that can be seen today.  Quite why British Railways engaged in this wanton destruction on this line is open to question, but in a short space of time, we lost some really lovely buildings between Reading and Bedwyn.

As I have noted, the now rare buildings at nearby Mortimer have thankfully survived and the next station towards Basingstoke (Bramley) has also retained its railway buildings.  Recently, there has been some activity at Aldermaston with the replacement of the weakened A340 road bridge taking place at the Reading end of the station.  The construction of this new bridge has actually truncated the goods siding on the Newbury platform which is still prominent today.

As far as I can see, the signal box at Aldermaston where my little book lived, would have been the replacement box of 1920.  But, I cannot say with any certainty when the box was removed but I would imagine that it was roughly at the same time as the nearby Midgham signal box.  It was obviously there in 1972 but for how long it survived after this is unclear.

This said there are a number of excellent railway books on the market and the dates of the Aldermaston box should be easy to find.  The station is a little spartan but has an agreeable atmosphere and the Kennet & Avon is nearby.  I was there last summer waiting for Caron and found the experience quite rewarding especially as the temperature was in the eighties.  Little did I know then that I would soon own a small piece of history from Aldermaston’s long lost signal box which had once proudly served this quiet little station.

Whilst researching this short article, I came across some interesting information about Midgham Railway Station and its signal box as I found out that this station had appeared in a WW2 training film for American soldiers called How to Behave in Britain.  It was shot in 1943 and can be found on You Tube with the station making its short debut some twenty-two minutes in.  I have watched the whole thing and apart from being quite haunting, (the past is another country) it is a valuable social record of the wartime years.

If you have the opportunity to visit either of these stations then do so as I can assure you there are some decent pubs nearby.

Happy Hunting

Stuart Miller-Osborne

Many years ago you were on this very beach with a photographer who captured your likeness on the small rock that lies at my feet

This ancient rock is as sea worn as it was when you were here and the beach has not changed at all

Yet the world has changed beyond all recognition

It has lost what innocence it once had, although you would not guess it when standing here on this wide Cornish beach

Children still play on the expansive sands and the waves are as turbulent as they were in 1914

It is rather dull today and there are not many people here but on fine days it can become quite busy

I was here last summer and watched as many climbed on to your small rock

Each was totally oblivious of its past and few are likely to have heard of you 

Or have been aware of your visit

To this very beach just over one hundred years ago

In the distance a busker is singing a rather soulful song

It starts:

Our freedoms seem to have faded

 If they ever existed at all

 Our lives are now so jaded

 And my world seems so spent and small

The buskers song is now fading into gentle winds

These are the very same winds that caressed the beach

On the day of your last visit

The Olivier sisters were photographed on a beach in Cornwall during the summer of 1914

     Margery, Brynhild, Noel and Daphne Olivier bathing in Cornwall in 1914

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:0livier_sisters_Cornwall_1914.jpg

See page for author [Public domain]

Stuart Miller-Osborne