Monday Morning

Got out the car at work Monday morning and saw this wonderful sky

 Lunchtime it all changed with threatening clouds coming in

January Blossom

The Clock House

The Clock house is a prominent feature just off what used to be the London to Bath road in Newbury. It replaced a previous feature which I will have to tell you about in another blog. The Clock house stands in the area known as Broadway which joins on to Northbrook Street and at one time was in an area called Speenhamland

When it was first built there was a public telephone behind the door where you could sit and talk to the person on the other end. There are also some stairs leading to the clock.

 

There is no longer a telephone inside but the place is still an important landmark in Newbury

 

 

The Goring Gap

 

 

The Thames flowing towards the Goring Gap taken from Goring Bridge

Roses are Red

Roses are Red

Francine was given a tiny stick, cut from a friend's rose bush in the hope it might grow.

Francine carefully inserted it into a pot of soil and crossed her fingers and toes.

She kept it in a sheltered spot and made sure it didn't dry out.

To her surprise a few buds appeared and within a few months it produced multiple scented blooms. All from a 12" stick!

Whoever would have guessed that growing roses could be so simple and so satisfying.

Have a go yourself. It really is that easy...

Roses are Red
Violets are Blue
I wrote this Blog
Just for you!

Thank you for your visit.

Have a great day.

x

Friendly Cat

So Cute

 

 

The Brenford Taylor

This is about one pub that has had three names and you could say starts with this place you see in the distance which was called the Railway Hotel. It was built when the Great Western Railway came through Moulsford and a station was built. A hotel was built near the Station and not far from an in called the Waterloo (you might remember it from anther blog). The idea being it gave travellers a place stay over while visiting the area or for relatives visiting Mental Asylum not far away. It was only open a few years before the station moved a mile or so down the line to Cholsey the Moulsford platform was demolished  and the Hotel was on it's own. It survived till the 1980s known as the Gables and as a Roadside café called the Downs Café and was used by truckers. There was a petrol station over to my right.

The name the Station hotel transferred to this building in Cholsey which would have been built the same time as the station which was not far away. The station had a branch like that went to Wallingford. The hotel was handy for people who also travelled to see relations at the Mental Asylum up the road. Not sure when it changed it's name but I remember it being called the Brenford Taylor and was a bub I started going in when I was 17. I worked there as a barman for a few years and was to meet my future wife here.  It was a famous pub at the time having over too different whisky's on sale, (used to be amusing watching the punters looking for an obscure one) and it was not unusual to have a lock in where the pub would be open till 2 0r 3 in the morning well after closing time. The landlord I worked for moved to Wallingford and the pub was renamed the Walnut tree. As you can see it did not say viable and was sold off for housing

 

The name Brenford Taylor came from the building you see on the left. That is the original Brenford Taylor in Cholsey 9Now Brenford House) and was on the other end of the Green called the Forty. I think the place shut down and the name moved to The old Station Hotel. The house you see in the photo still had the bar and some of the pub features in when I went in there back in the 1970's

 

So what became of the Brenford Taylor, well this is what it looks like now. It's gained an extension by the old lounge bar and the old stables over to the right made into a nice house. But I do wonder if it still has the Beer Cellar

Taking Part in Our World Tuesday

Half a Ghost Sign

Took this a few years ago while looking for the remains of a disused canal, the building bay have been one of the wharf houses near where the basin of the Wilt's & Berks canal used to be. The old advertising sign still hangs in though the one round the corner was cut in half by an extension to the building.

Taking part in Monday Mural

 

 

Sunset on the Downs

It was late when I went to get some new photos of the work going on along the railway near where I live and I realised the sun was setting over the nearby Downs

This is some of the work happening but I will tell more in another blog

The sun sets over  Kingstanding Hill

More Rain

No doubt you have sen the flooding round the country it causes chaos with travel and makes peoples lives a misery. This year we have been lucky round where I live but we did have lots of water.

 A few days ago we had some serious rain which flooded the road near where I live. This happens on a regular basis and makes getting along the pavement a hazard.

 This little lot makes you think if you really want to drive through it

 but I have to to drive through it to work and did this morning, mind you I do have a 4x4 . BTW it gets deeper than that.

 Lunchtime I went out to get some photos and on the way back took a photo of a puddle that had gone down, when I drove past in the morning it was covering half the road

 Getting nearer work there was a huge puddle covering this area, people had to drive through here to get to their houses or right to get to the carparks at work, there is also a school nearby

This little lot is the run off from the roof and road around Diamond Light Source when overflows

it runs to this pond, normally they don't have very much water in them. A lot of water but if you want to See what it can do check this blog  but you can also read the blog I wrote on the British weather a few years ago which show how extreme it can be round were I live.

Roman Mosaic

One of the exhibits at the British Museum was this show of early Christian remains from the Roman Empire found in Hinton St Mary Dorset 

 

 You should be able to blow this up and read it

 

  This was a wall painting

  A wall Fresco

 

Close up of the Fresco, Could not say if the last three were from Hinton St Mary but I thought they were amazing.

Taking part in Monday Mural

Ominous Skys

Ominous Sky's over the ponds at Fairmile, This was taken a few weeks before the heavy rains we had over Christmas

Rainy Day Cake

Well had to do something

The Waterloo

The Waterloo public house was an old coaching inn along the A329 turnpike just outside Cholsey.

Look on an historic Ordnance Survey  map and you will find the inn shown clearly as the Waterloo Inn. Built in 1816 after the battle people would have travelled the turnpike from Oxford to Reading or onto London and stopped off here for the night Horses would have been kept in the stables round the back and changed or rested overnight before the coach travelled on. Turnpikes were toll roads and tolls would be paid at the toll houses that you can still see along the routs today though now we don't pay to use the road. The pub went into decline around 1840 when the Railway came through and a hotel was built nearby. The pub survived right up to the 1990's when it was sold.

The entrance to the Waterloo, the Stables were around the side of the building and when I used to frequent the pub used for a Disco. Little of them seems to remain now as the old buildings were demolished.

Now a little piece of history. Back in the 1970's when I used to go to the pub the landlord did some decorating and uncovered a mural on the wall of the back room you see towards the back of the building. It depicted the railway running past Cholsey Church and ghosts and ghouls in a macabre dance around the graves in the churchyard. It was very creepy to look at. What I found even creepier was the pentagon painted on the ceiling. The room also had symbols on the walls and ceiling and was probably used for rituals. It was a creepy place to live, and some major misfortune happened with alarming frequency to those who lived there. The cellar in the building which was the Waterloo contains an anti-male, menevolant presence. Women were always oblivious to it but at least four former landlords along with the sons felt the presence. My friend Nick used to live here when his dad  was landlord and showed me the room after when the new landlord was decorating place and they were uncovered, I never went in the cellar

The front of the building, the smaller window you see used to be the entrance door and had a porch where I used to sit and drink my coke while dad had a pint inside It was bricked up when the building was sold and became a nursery called the Railway Children The place was sold again to Cranford House school in Moulsford and is now run as a nursery school by them

The A329 Turnpike looking towards Cholsey Village, the road carries on towards Wallingford

The turnpike going past the Waterloo now called the Little Willows.

The Turnpike going towards Moulsford, the traffic lights you see mark the railway which was what became the Waterloos downfall. The one thing that remains and tells you what it used to be is the pub sign post still standing today.
I'll bring some story's of more of the lost pubs from this village in the future.
Taking Part in Our World Tuesday

 

Small Mural

Bit of a loss to find stuff at the moment but came across this small mosaic mural in a church a couple of months ago.

 

Taking part in Monday Mural

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to you all and my one of my last photos of 2015 taken  about 8 hours before 2016. Hope you all have a prosperous new year and are not too hungover today.