Retro: Can a psychic help us out?

David Cliffe • Published 8 Oct 2009 07:00 0 Comments

Noel Coward's play Blithe Spirit was first presented at the Palace Theatre, Manchester, in 1940, and was an immediate success.

It pokes fun at the fashion among middle-class people for séances, mediums and table-rapping.

Not many years earlier, there had been a Reading Psychic College, at No 11 Bath Road -which I expect took itself rather more seriously.

When the college closed, the contents were sold off, and I thought that the sale catalogue in the library's collection would be a good starting-point for a Retro article.

The house, variously called Downs, The Downs and Downs House, appears in directories from 1860 onwards, as a private residence. Then in the directories for 1934 and 1935 it disappears, and reappears in 1936 as The Reading Psychic College under principal Thomas Dudley Parsons.

By 1937, it seems the upper floors were rented off as flats, and the gardener's cottage was also rented. By the time the 1939 directory was compiled, the college had closed, but the tenants were still there, and in future years more flats were created on the ground floor. Eventually, Downs House was demolished, and by 1967 a purpose-built block of apartments called The Firs stood on the site.

What is particularly intriguing about the 1938 contents sale is that the college appears to have gone away and left everything in situ - the crockery and cutlery, the books, including a set of volumes entitled Psychic Science, a gramophone, the coal in the cellar and the potted chrysanthemums.

The building had a lecture hall, containing one hundred 'iron-frame tip-up theatre chairs with leather seats', a piano, an organ, some hymn books and a magic lantern.

Among the bric-a-brac in other rooms were 'a Hausa leather case', 'a pair of camel-driver's spears', 'six Arab throwing-spears', and 'a pagan musical instrument'.

If you know more about the Psychic College get in touch - or if you have a decent photograph of Downs House, because we don't have one in the collection. Email ahewitt@berksmedia.co.uk or call 0118 955 3303.

- A RETRO reader thinks he may know the identity of the mystery country house featured last week.

John Hobbs, of Byron Road, Earley, said: "I think it may be Buscot Park near Faringdon. The appearance seems familiar, especially the low buildings to the left and right and also the unusual sun blinds."

Buscot is now in Oxfordshire, was part of Berkshire until 1974.

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