Some notes on 63 Northbrook Street, Newbury

(Reprinted from “The Transactions of Newbury District Field Club” – 1970)

By Peter J. M. Davies, m.a.

I have assumed that I was asked to write this article for two or three reasons: to record the history so far as it is known or can be conjectured of my family business premises, 63, Northbrook Street, to show from it how many similar build­ings, and therefore Newbury itself, must have developed and to include in it any reminiscences which give a picture of the town as it was before modern life made it like any other town. Past numbers of the Transactions have numerous notes and small articles about features of interest or buildings which were dis­appearing in Newbury so I add this article to them in the belief that such jottings may be of interest and value to the many people who know Newbury only as it is now.

Above its mainly unedifying shop fronts Northbrook Street has a venerable enough appearance but it is in fact the newest part of the old centre of Newbury. The town must first have grown from a settlement guarding a crossing of the River Kennet, probably on the south bank since the parish church of St. Nicolas is there and the City, further to the south, is always looked upon as the oldest part of the town. The City, between the Litten and the Hospital, contains a quantity of old almshouses and the old Manor House as well as Fair Close where the old St. Bartholomew's Fair was held. St. Bartholomew's Grammar School was also originally here.

Between the City and the Kennet runs Bartholomew Street, which, with Cheap Street and the Market Place, must have been reasonably well settled by early Medieval times. The Wharf behind the market place was the site of Newbury Castle, demolished during or after the time of King Stephen. The one remaining building in the car park is said to be built from stones taken from the castle and was erected when the Wharf itself was laid out at the time of the construction of the Kennet and Avon Canal at the end of the 18th Century.

Similarly at the other end of the town, from the Broadway northwards, is the settlement of Speenhamland adjacent to the Roman settlement of Speen. This was not then part of Newbury but was separated from it by a causeway. The Marsh is the name still used by old inhabitants for the area now prosaically called Victoria Park.

Obviously communication between Speenhamland and Newbury (named Ulvritone at the time of the Conquest) would have been inevitable and the resulting track across the marsh

eventually became Northbrook Street. The pattern of its development can be imagined from a glance at still existing village streets in the district, from a street of scattered build­ings, gardens and fields as at East Garston to a continuous street with its gardens backing on to fields as at Aldermaston. Newbury as a centre of a great farming and sheep raising area became important as a cloth manufacturing town and its greatest days were in the 16th Century when Jack of Newbury had his cloth factory in Northbrook Street on the site now occupied by Marks and Spencer and in the building still standing next to that shop. Until the early 19th Century the cloth trade pros­pered, supplemented by the normal activities of a market town and towards the end of this period the increasing population encouraged the development of those many courts at right angles to the main streets consisting of cottages now condemned or destroyed.

63, Northbrook Street reflects in its own history the develop­ment which took place from the 16th Century onwards. During recent repairs to a wall we uncovered some of the original timber and wattle and daub which Dr. Kaines-Thomas dates to the middle of the 17th Century when the house was built. At that time it would have presented to the street a typical "Tudor" or Jacobean timbered front surmounted by six dormer windows, the only solid masonry being the central fireplaces and chimney breast. Inside the building some of this timbering is still visible, but the chimney breast on the ground floor is concealed behind showcases, only appearing on the second floor. On its south side the building butted on to the space or building now occu­pied by Halfords. On the north was probably a field or garden extending to the Monument Inn, with a carriage drive next to the house leading down to the stables. In front ran the North Brook.

This brook which gives its name to the Street and saves us from the banality of a High Street runs from Northcroft Lane to the Broadway, its direction of flow explaining why true inhabitants of Newbury refer to the Water Bridge as " up" the street and the Broadway as " down." The brook now runs in a culvert but my father remembers a watercolour in the house in his childhood which shewed the brook as being crossed by numerous small bridges and planks. A picture of the same subject hangs in the Municipal Buildings. During alterations eight years ago we found under the shop floor a culvert with a beautifully arched top in brick which appeared to run from our stables into the North Brook. No doubt in what the Victorians would have called "those unenlightened times" the brook served as drain and supplementary water supply.

The 18th Century saw many changes in Newbury. The Pelican, the Chequers and the other inns in the Broadway were an important stage on the coach road from London to Bath and the West, so new houses were built and old ones were refaced to be in keeping with the times. Our building was one of the latter and a Georgian stucco front was applied to it with a parapet to disguise the dormer windows and conceal the sloping roof. Rooms were built over the entrance to the carriage way and alterations were made inside. The original staircase was replaced by one with a plain carved handrail and turned banisters and at least one room was panelled. This attractive room still exists intact and is almost identical in style with rooms which I occupied at Cambridge in a building designed by Gibbs in 1739. Exactly when these alterations were made is not known but by the middle of the Century another more drastic altera­tion was also made. West Street was developed and the southern end of the house was demolished to make room for it. This we discovered during the alterations eight years ago when it was found that the roof timbers on the outside of the West Street wall had been chopped off and the wall itself, of very poor workmanship, built up in the cheapest and quickest way possible. A map dated 1775 in the Borough Archives, the earliest I have seen, shows West Street extending about as far as the new Inland Revenue building, bordered by fields but with few houses and continued across a field by an avenue of trees.

It is clear that before West Street was formed all the land between what are now West Street and Albert Road and extend­ing back to Elliott's works on Northcroft belonged to this house. The deeds of the property do not go back before 1854, but until the 1930s we were expected to collect the tithes from all the houses in those two streets. By the 1930s my father found it more convenient to commute all the tithes for a lump sum to extinguish this liability.

In 1847 my great grandfather, James Jeremiah Davies, came from Reading to found our business. I have a copy of the Reading Mercury dated Saturday Morning, October 23rd, 1847, containing a flowery advertisement to the effect that J.J.D. was offering a range of China, Glass, Bohemian Crystal, Alabaster, Window Glass, Lamps and many other items which we still sell. This was at 41, Northbrook Street where the Southern Electricity Board now is. Two or three years later he moved to the present premises which he bought from a lawyer with the unusual name of Jere Bunney. For the first time the house was no longer wholly a private residence. The downstairs rooms were fitted with showcases and the carriage drive covered with a glass roof. These original fittings survive and can now be considered to have period charm. The glass roof, as it faces north, gives a bright light so my great grandfather planted the Black Hamburgh grape vine which still flourishes there, is well over a hundred years old, comparing favourably in age with the Hampton Court vine, and must be the only grape vine in a shop in this country. The weather boarded side of this building still overhangs the covered drive as it did when it was outside, and in my father's young days there was still a pump there. Beyond this the old kitchens, outbuildings and stables were gradually transformed into ware­houses and glass cutting rooms though the old harness room still has remnants of the rush matting which kept the leather from the damp walls and some of the non-slip stable flooring is still in place. In fact the stables were still used as such until the 1914 war when the Army Remounts commandeered the last horse from the shafts of its cart in the Market Place.

The horse was not the only means of transport. At one time my great grandfather lived in the London Road in a house whose garden ran down to the Canal. By the bank was mouldering a barge which he used to send up to the Potteries for goods which were unloaded at the Wharf, which at that time had a number of basins at right angles to the canal. From his time few alterations were made to the building until in 1961/62 we extended to the first floor, opening the panelled rooms as show rooms and revealing the only surviving part of the Georgian staircase. It only remains now for me to add one or two anecdotes which give a picture of what Newbury was like during the 19th Century as I have had it told me by my parents.

First I must mention the Bunney family from whom we bought the house. When I was a boy there were still two Misses Bunney living in Donnington Square which at that time seemed to me to be a refuge for spinsters or maiden aunts, but we never heard what happened to the original Jere Bunney. However, in 1926 my father was in New Zealand, and walking along the quay at Wellington saw a lawyer's office named Jere Bunney. No one could give him any information as Mr. Bunney was on a fishing trip of indefinite length, and when I walked the same way in 1951 Mr. Bunney had just died. We imagined that there must be some connection and two years ago a visitor from Australia asked if I knew anything of a family named Bunney who lived at Murradup in Western Australia and thought they originated from Newbury. Apparently they went to Murradup from New Zealand and bought a sheep station.

Soon afterwards the father died and his eldest son, aged about 12, took over and made a success of it.

I have heard many stories of restless sons of local families who went out to remote places in the last Century and did strange things. One is said to have married the daughter of the king of a cannibal island and succeeded his father-in-law in due course. Another appeared home from a South American cattle boat with no shoes, but with an enormous cattle whip. Later as a police officer he had control of an area of Rhodesia as big as England. One helped to build the mosquito infested Panama Canal and complained that it was too civilised. Others went to Klondike and came back with their pockets full of bags of gold dust. At least one of these hired Cary's Hall for dances for his friends until his gold had gone and he had to be off again.

Newbury was a quiet and peaceful place in those days and these incursions must have created some stir, but there were other colourful visitors. A Russian with a dancing bear appeared in the streets most winters at the end of the century as did a very good German or Viennese band in Hussar costume. The opportunity was once taken to hire them for a dance in the Corn Exchange. My parents also remember Mr. Wilson, the vet., who lived in a yard off the Broadway with a complete horse's skeleton above his surgery door, who used to drive on his rounds in the snow in a horse-drawn sleigh with bells. The Broadway in fact had quite a rural atmosphere. A baker, whose chicken spent their days pecking corn round the horse trough in the middle of the road, had his bavins of wood for the oven delivered onto the pavement outside his shop. They occupied most of the pavement and stayed there until he had the time and inclination to move them. Throughout the town there were shops specializing in every conceivable article; a bookbinder, a taxidermist, a silk shop with nothing but bales of silk. One wonders how some of them made a living: an old man with sides of bacon hanging up but only a few windfall pears in the window, a dark shop down steps with nothing but a basket of eggs in the window, a woman who sold " hundreds and thousands " in her front room and a shop where locust beans were sold from a sack by the handful, the amount depending on the size of the hand.

Quiet our ancestors' lives may have been but they were energetic, and we owe a great deal to them in the wealth of our present day activities. This town has a remarkably large number

of organisations catering for almost every interest. The Newbury District Field Club itself has been in existence since 1870, many other cultural and sporting societies can trace their roots back to the last century as can, for instance, the Newbury Symphony Orchestra in which three generations of my own family have been playing for 90 years.

With the growth of Newbury from a quiet market town with its own character, from a closed community to the present typi­cally 20th Century conglomeration it is obvious that few of its present inhabitants know much of the town's past. I hope that this article has given them a glimpse of that past and may encourage them to try and find out more.

Author: Peter J M Davies
© NDFC