A letter from the chairman

At the AGM of the Shinfield Local History Society held in January 2022, Catherine Glover and I agreed to become secretary and chairman of the Society respectively. In part this was an act of rescue. The outgoing committee, and especially George Taylor, who had run the society for many years, wished to stand down. Without volunteers to take their place, the Society would – make no mistake – have had to dissolve itself.

Shinfield deserves a local history society. Over the past thirty or forty years, it has been transformed from a village on the edge of Reading, dominated by the university’s farms and research centers, into a large and populous suburb. It ought to be able to support a thriving local history society which would explain what was once here, what has been lost, what remains and how what we see today has come into existence.

So we have taken responsibility for the Society with the ambition of building a new audience for Shinfield history and local history generally. We need others to join us as committee members and ordinary members. Ann Young agreed to remain as Treasurer for the time being but offers to take over from her would also be most welcome.

We hope to do two things. The first is to build interest and understanding in the history of the parish (in which we include Three Mile Cross and Spencers Wood) and surrounding areas. This website is the beginning of that process. We will continue to offer a lecture series which we hope will be varied enough to appeal to all tastes and will be open to all interested. Second, we would like, in the fullness of time, to produce a new history of Shinfield (and perhaps Swallowfield too). There are existing histories of both places (see elsewhere on the website), but all old and of their time, and far from adequate. We would be interested in meeting with anyone who would like to join us in the venture, even if they wish only to transcribe sources which we can draw on later. We shall write more about our ambitions here, but there is much to be done.