The famous faces and places commemorated by Newbury’s Blue Plaque scheme
Illustrating Newbury’s rich heritage and commemorating not just the lives of significant residents, but businesses and events throughout the ages, the Blue Plaque scheme spreading throughout the town.
Now 19 strong, blue panels are proliferating throughout Newbury and there are plans for more.
“The public are welcome to put forward their suggestions of a person, a business or notable event, to be discussed by Newbury Town Council’s Heritage Working Group,” said Anthony Pick, who chairs the group.
But there are rules governing who gets a plaque.
“One important requirement is that an individual must have been dead for at least 10 years and a historical event must have occurred at least 10 years previously,” he added.
“The subject must obviously be in some way exceptional or outstanding, as well as having a solid local connection.”
The original concept of the blue plaque was devised in London, back in 1866.
Newbury Town Council’s Blue Plaques scheme was launched in 2015, in conjunction with the Newbury Society and identifies individuals with a wide range of historic local connections.
Among them are some formidable women, as you can see below.
The Chequers Hotel plaque commemorates the reference to Newbury (as “Kennetbridge”) in Thomas Hardy’s novel Jude the Obscure.
The plaques are manufactured and put up by Crescent Signs, with each ceremonially unveiled by the mayor.
The Newbury Society contributes £100 to the cost of each.
Here we take a look at some of the people - and places - who have been worthy of their very own blue plaque.
Five time Wimbledon ladies champion
Charlotte ‘Lottie’ Dod (1871-1960) was five times Wimbledon ladies tennis champion in the late 1880s-90s and lived in Newbury from 1905.
Her plaque is at Victoria Park tennis courts. She was an outstanding British sportswoman of the pre-First World War era.
In 1904 she won the British Ladies Amateur Golf Championship and played twice for the England women’s national hockey team, which she helped to found.
In 1905 her family moved to Edgecombe, Andover Road, Newbury (now the site of Woodridge House) and lived there until 1913.
Here she joined the Welford Park Archers and won the women’s silver medal in archery at the 1908 Summer Olympics.
Other sports which she mastered were the Cresta Run, skating, rowing, sculling, horse-riding, mountaineering, and billiards.
The motorcycling mayor
Elsie Lilly Kimber (1889-1954) was Newbury’s first woman Mayor in 1932-33, the first since the borough was created in 1596.
She was an eye-catching sight. In his 1990 autobiography, the Newbury-based Watership Down author Richard Adams wrote: “Alderman Elsie Kimber was a legendary figure in Newbury.
“She had rimless glasses, wore a heavily-skirted, brown belted garment, sandals and no hat, and she rode a motor-bike. She was emancipated, bizarre, no fool and excellent company, even to a small boy.
“To me it seemed entirely natural that the Mayor should look somewhat unusual. I vaguely supposed that that was what mayors looked like.”
Her plaque is at 64 Bartholomew Street, now Hillier & Wilson Estate Agents, but formerly Kimber’s Grocery and Provision Merchants, informally called “Kimber’s Corner”, which she ran from 1939 until her retirement in 1953.
Elsie was a pioneer in local government. Born at 64 Bartholomew Street she was one of the first intake to the Newbury Girls’ School when it opened in 1904 under Jane Luker.
An ARP warden in the Second World War, as a councillor her interests included housing, slum clearance, public health and education.
Disabled campaigner and ‘responaut’
The extraordinary Doris Page MBE (1925-1991) was a Newbury resident and, from 1963, a disability champion, although confined to an iron lung and unable to move a finger.
An attack of severe respiratory polio in 1955 left the young mum of two dependent on her family.
Yet she changed the landscape for disabled people through her journalism from inside her iron lung in a room at 39 Essex Street, Newbury where the plaque sits.
Daughter of a drayhorse keeper, as a young woman she had served in the Royal Navy in Italy and Malta but had moved to Newbury with her husband in the early 1950s when the illness struck.
Trapped in her metal cylinder, Doris became a founder member and campaigner for the charity Invalids at Home, now Independence at Home, founding a magazine she called The Responaut, to champion the rights of disabled people.
Her amazing achievements were capped in 1968 with a visit to Buckingham Palace to collect her MBE - her bed and machinery loaded on a large truck.
Her ashes are interred with her husband’s at St George’s Church, Wash Common.
A pioneer in girls’ education
Esther Jane Luker (1872-1969), known as Jane, was the first headmistress of Newbury Girls’ School from its foundation in 1904 until her retirement in 1933, and a pioneer of secondary education for girls in Newbury and the surrounding area.
She believed in a broad-based education that, although rigorous, would not be narrowly academic but would embrace a love of art and music.
By the 1920s its pupils were gaining entrance scholarships to Cambridge.
Daughter of a brewery family, her plaque is at Luker Court in Ireland Drive.
Star of the silent film era
Plaques also commemorate many men who made their mark on the town. They include Stewart Rome, an internationally famous film actor during the silent film era, born in Newbury in 1886 and eventually retiring here.
He was born Septimus William Ryott, the son of an auctioneer of the same name who died aged 40, and grandson of Robert Ryott, a Newbury pharmacist and former Mayor of Newbury.
According to his obituary in the Newbury Weekly News (March 4, 1965), he was the first real star of British cinema.
His plaque is at 58 Northbrook Street.
Businesses celebrated
Historic businesses celebrated include Vodafone in Broadway, which hosted the first mobile call in the UK in 1985; the 18th century George and Pelican Inn, in Broadway and London Road, and West Mills Brewery, commemorating Newbury’s brewing industry, at the side of St Nicholas House.
The Plaza in Market Place, now Bill’s restaurant, hosted many latterly famous bands in the 1960s including a diverse array of rising and acclaimed music talent such as Cream, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, Billy J Kramer and The Dakotas.
A young Jimi Hendrix played there during his UK tour in 1967.
A blue plaque, the town’s 19th, was unveiled there in August.
Many thanks to Anthony Pick for information provided in this feature. Details of all the plaques can be found at newbury.gov.uk/history/blue-plaques/
Thatcham Town Council also has its own Blue Plaque programme.
