Back in the day: We delve into our archives to see what was going on 10 years ago, 25 years ago and 50 years ago this week
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10 years ago – November 6, 2014
Camp Hopson sold
Camp Hopson, the independent retailer and mainstay of Newbury life for the last 93 years, has been sold to a London department store chain.
The department and furniture store on Northbrook Street has been sold to independent chain Morleys Stores Limited, which owns seven stores in the capital and a furniture retailer in Bicester.
Morleys will keep the name of Camp Hopson and retain existing staff, but have not purchased the separate funeral and removals businesses.
The chairman of Morleys, Bernard Dreesmann said that £3m would now be invested in Camp Hopson as a result of the acquisition, which he said represented “an excellent strategic fit to the existing business”.
Morleys Group was established in 1927 and in the year ending January 2014 their sales were £90.6m with a pre-tax profit of £7.1m.
25 years ago – November 4, 1999
Turnpike housing
West Berkshire Council has finally submitted plans to demolish Turnpike School and build 140 houses on the site.
The former school site has been ripe for development since proposals to merge Turnpike School with Shaw House School were unveiled in Spring 1998.
The council has now applied to its own planning department for outline permission to build on the 13-acre site and, provided that the plan succeeds, the site will be sold to a developer to pay for improvements to the new Trinity School.
Under the plan, access to the houses would be from the A4, and the development would be a mixture of social and commercial housing, with at least 20 per cent of the site being used as open space.
50 years ago – November 7, 1974
Bend it like Joanna
Mrs Pat Furber couldn’t believe her eyes as she watched her seven-year-old daughter calmly bend a solid metal fork almost double.
And they almost popped out of her head as young Joanna repeated the process with a teaspoon.
“It’s amazing,” gasped her mother. “If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I would never have believed it.”
A NWN reporter shared her original scepticism, but Joanna was only too happy to demonstrate her skills when she called at her home at High Street, Kintbury.
It happened on Friday after Joanna and her four-year-old brother Richard sat down to watch Uri Geller on the television.
The children were impressed by his key-bending techniques so they decided to have a go themselves.
Mrs Furber supplied cutlery from the drawer and watched in astonishment as the metal turned to putty in her daughter’s tiny fingers.
Joanna, who was on half-term holiday from St Mary’s School, remained calm. “It’s probably magic,” she reported in a matter-of-fact sort of way.
