One’s default view on things, acquired for whatever reason, can be quite skewed. With that in mind, and aware of having lived in Caversham for donkey’s years, I went looking for different view than mine. This item, below, from a long-standing friend, fits the bill perfectly and needs no comment from me.
The Americans call it a Way Station: a stopping point on a journey. Caversham was a Way Station for me, a 15-year stopping point on my life’s journey. Our family had left West London in the late ’90s for a larger house and wider open spaces. Caversham fulfilled those criteria and was home throughout our children’s school years. Eventually we moved again, this time to the north of England. Caversham the Way Station lay behind us, just a chapter within a book.
But what a chapter. It’s fair to say that I knew next to nothing about Caversham or the local area when we moved there in 1997. It wasn’t quite a blindfold game of pinning a tail to a donkey, but nearly so. I needed to remain in commuting distance of London, and under the circumstances, Caversham seemed to provide a simple solution. I was unprepared for how deeply Caversham would affect our lives, or its legacy on us after moving on from there. I’ll say a little about that legacy at the end of this piece.
So, what were my first impressions of Caversham? Almost certainly they would centre upon its quirkiness. Yes, it’s officially been part of Reading since 1911, but even a casual glance at the map shows that Caversham stands apart, a stray oval bolted on to the urban sprawl that stretches south of the Thames. It’s an isolated area, a halfway house. It’s arguable that Caversham has never been totally subsumed into greater Reading, and in many ways it forms a town in its own right. Caversham is markedly larger than the villages of south Oxfordshire that border it to the north, east and west.
Another factor that marks Caversham out is its diversity. As an incomer, it rapidly became evident that Caversham is in fact a composite of several very different communities. There’s Emmer Green, Caversham Park Village, Lower Caversham and (using the dire estate agent parlance) Caversham Heights. Each of these communities has unique characteristics, and perhaps the only factor that unites the area is that Caversham is largely residential. There’s precious little local large-scale industrial space, with a sizeable fraction of its 10,000 or so residents either working south of the river or (like me) commuting further afield.
We were fortunate enough to have the renowned historian Mary Kift as a neighbour, and it was from her that I first became aware of Caversham’s long history. Ironically, I felt that our own local patch in Caversham Heights was remarkably rootless. Most of our friends were incomers like us, and long-term residents were a relative rarity. But those of our neighbours who had moved to Caversham were in the main (and unlike us) intent on staying there. It’s not hard to see why: there’s a good range of local amenities, and there’s extensive parkland as well.
And with regards open space, we were taken by surprise how much countryside and woodland was accessible: often just a short walk or bike ride away. We’d ride the Thames towpath or bridle paths to destinations including Goring, Streatley, Sonning or Wallingford, discovering new places along the way. And we’d come across further places courtesy of the sporting connections of our sons – for example, the Abbey Rugby Club on the road to Peppard, or the cricket club at Kidmore End.
These sporting connections also expanded our network of local contacts and friends and brought an additional share of memories. I still argue to this day that the coldest place I’ve ever been (and I’ve travelled within the Arctic Circle in the depths of midwinter) was the touchline of a rugby game at the Abbey Club, one wet and grim autumnal Sunday.
So, what was the legacy that I referred to above, the result of my 15 years living inside RG4? Obviously, it would include a host of memories – including some truly dire ones, but thankfully they’re a minority. Most of my memories of Caversham life are largely positive.
But the real legacy was the friends that we retain from our time living there. We were in Caversham long enough to make firm, lifelong friends. Indeed, my son met his wife whilst they were both at sixth form college in Henley: they’ve been an item ever since then. Yes, of course Caversham was a Way Station – but it played an enormous part in the lives of my family and myself, and we’ll never forget it.”
