Toys and Games to Pass the Time at Newbury museum

Trying to find ways to keep children occupied, entertained and educated over the last year has been particularly difficult. Many of us have found technology has helped to entertain and pass the time, but how did people spend their leisure time in the days before the internet, computers and television? West Berkshire Museum has a range of pastimes for all ages in its collection, all with different stories to tell. Researched and written by Dawn Sellick, Heritage Access Assistant at West Berkshire Museum.

Make Do and Mend

We have become far more aware recently of how much waste we produce, and it may seem that it’s a modern concept to reduce how much we throw away, but far from it. Before mass production really took off, and particularly during the Second World War, when resources were scarce, nothing was wasted. The prominent local business, Elliotts of Newbury, had changed production from furniture to aircraft parts in early 1940. The workers used the scraps of material left over from manufacturing to make toys to sell for the war effort, including this bagatelle board. The donor’s father found six marble sized ball bearings and the donor attempted to fire them round the board using a knitting needle. This game was not only an example of using waste products, it was also very creative and even educational as the game involved adding up the score.

DIY Bingo

Games similar to the board games we know today have been played for thousands of years, but the boxed games we are familiar with became popular from the 1930s onwards. One such game in the Museum’s collection is a bingo game. Although this game was bought in a shop, it could easily be re-created today at home by drawing pictures of shop fronts in West Berkshire, adding a grid under each one of items for sale and making a copy of every item for the caller.

The original game came with paper circles to cover each item as it was called out, rather than marking with a pen. In this way, the game could be played over and over. The shop fronts in the original game were a baker and confectioner, a jeweller, a milliner (hat shop) and draper (fabric shop), a fruiterer, a toys and games shop and a grocery.

Knitting a Toy

One very busy local farmer who reluctantly retired at the age of 81 was Honor Atkins.

She lived and farmed in Enborne from 1956 but despite her busy life, she found time for arts and crafts. She painted watercolours, and also made a dolls house and contents for her grandchildren.

Photographs of items in the Museum’s collection are taken beside a measure to indicate the size of the object, and these images show just how tiny these teddy bears and monkey are, and how painstakingly Honor worked to make them.

Film Star Dancing in your Home

The first films were made in the late 19th century, and although ‘Don Juan’ in 1926 was the first with sound, it was ‘The Jazz Singer’ in 1927 that was the first full-length film to feature speech. By the time this film was released, silent films had already become very popular, and the actors who starred in them are still known today. A local actor was Stewart Rome, who was born in Newbury in 1886 and made more than 160 films between 1913 and 1950. In a vote in Picture magazine in 1915, he came second in popularity to Charlie Chaplin, but it was the latter who became world-famous and his image, particularly his creation of the Tramp, is now iconic.

This image was used as part of a magical entertainment, in a British-made game sold in the 1930s and 1940s. An envelope contained a 2D cardboard Charlie Chaplin toy with hinged leg joints and the instructions to amaze an audience, who would see Charlie dancing by himself. “It Will Amuse and Mystify Your Friends for Hours. No Electricity Springs Expense. It's Amazing Baffling Amusing.” The only clue is the need for a length of black cotton thread.

West Berkshire residents have shown great ingenuity over the years, to create entertainment for their own families as well as for the general public. They found ways to use scraps of materials to create toys that were fun, and often educational, a tradition that continues today. Now that the Museum is open again, currently Wednesday-Saturday 10am-4pm, visitors can see examples of leisure activities in our permanent exhibition, Lives and Landscape.

All images are the property of West Berkshire Museum.