I spent the Easter Bank Holiday with my parents in Newbury, and had a stroll through the town I once knew so well. As a child, it seemed an exciting place with big shops, a new shopping centre, and a great sense of history. In the early 1980's it was described as Britain's fastest growing town, but the recession of the later '80s hit hard, and it feels as if the shopping centre never really recovered.
It may not be the centre for shopping that it once was, but it seems to be establishing itself as a pleasant, well-preserved place to live and to visit. Much of the town centre has been pedestrianised, and it's possible to sit outside in in the market place and enjoy a coffee. It used to be a car park.
I remember Beynon's being a rambling old store in the 1980's, but I don't know when it closed. The Newbury of my childhood was a place of unique shops; Beynon's was (I think) a small department store, Daniel's sold beds, and Toomers was a department store with a wonderful brass front. All gone now, of course. Is a chain eatery progress?
The Beynon's sign made the news in the 2005 election campaign. The conservative candidate, Richard Benyon, had a campaign picture with him standing outside the building. The 'Beynon' sign was doctored to match his surname. Did he think no-one would notice? He still won, with a small majority.
At the heart of the marketplace is the fine 19th century corn exchange. As a teenager, the fine facade concealed a rather worn-out interior. I remember going to a seedy gig there, and various amateur dramatic productions. Nowadays, it's been refurbished, and is a centre for the arts, and the Newbury Spring Festival.
Close to the market place is Newbury Wharf on the Kennet and Avon canal. Newbury grew in prosperity in the sixteenth century as a centre for the cloth trade, with the wool man Jack o' Newbury being the town's most successful son. The wharf was the place where wool and later cotton was brought into the town, and finished cloth taken away. Nowadays, you can take a trip on a canal boat from there. Adjacent to the wharf is the old Cloth Hall (above), which now is home to the West Berkshire Museum. When I was a child (before the formation of the West Berkshire unitary authority) it was the Newbury District Museum, but inside, very little has changed; a fascinating collection of long cases covering a vast array of subjects, presented with sober-looking labels that offer a level of detail absent in more modern museums. It seemed boringly old fashioned when I was a kid, but now I appreciate it for mostly resisting the pressure on most museums to offer a 'visitor experience'.
When I left Newbury in 1986 to go to Bristol University, I wasn't sad to leave a town that was down at heel and seek excitement elsewhere. It's a sign of approaching middle age that I like it more and more. But I'm not ready to leave the bright lights of London just yet.
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