Retro: Clean sweep

David Cliffe • Published 24 Sep 2009 10:00 0 Comments

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HERE is a picture I thought I knew.

It appeared in a book of photographs of old Reading, Reading As It Was, by former borough librarian, Jack Lee, whom I also knew.

Published in 1973, it was the first such collection to be published. Reading public libraries also used to sell a postcard version of this photograph.

The original, quite small, is glued into an album kept in the strongroom. Last week, the time had come to catalogue it, which made me look at it more closely. I had two surprises.

The first was the age of the picture. The postcard caption had said c.1870, but I thought I should check.

We're looking directly at the Upper Ship Hotel Commercial Hotel in Duke Street, bearing the landlord's name, Rose, over the door.

The archway leading to the inn yard is on the left. The hotel was re-faced in 1912 and was subsequently known as the Ship Hotel and the Royal County Hotel.

We're looking at it from the end of King's Road, built in the early 1830s and ending opposite the Upper Ship, rather than continuing the line of King Street, as now.

Edward Weller's street plan dated 1840 shows the end of King Street as in the photograph; but the map drawn for the General Board of Health, dated 1853, shows that the 'town' end of King's Road has been re-aligned as a continuation of King Street.

This places the picture around 20 years earlier than thought. The other surprise concerns the muddy state of the road. Horse-drawn traffic on King's Road, the main road to and from London, when it reached Duke Street, had to turn left or right. The junction must have been a notorious bottleneck - the droppings from horses waiting to negotiate the turn, combined with the churned-up mud, are evident in the picture.

He may be difficult to see, but just to the left of the arch leading to the inn yard, and by the bollard, there is a hatted figure with a broom. On the original picture you can also see that between the bollards, there is a narrow strip that has been swept clear of mud. The shadowy figure must be a crossing-sweeper.

I had tended to think that crossing-sweepers were found only in Dickens' London, the best known of them being Joe, in Bleak House. It appears that provincial towns, and Reading in particular, also had them.

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