Picture Of The Old Post Office Bridge

[Stewart]

I was with my son and his friends last Sunday at the Art & Craft Sunday at the Oakford Social Club (to me and you a pub) in Blagrave Street, opposite Reading Station.

None of my relatively youthful friends believed me when i said this was an old Post Office building, where once many years ago was a "bridge" well, I think more perhaps a conveyor belt? Which spanned from the Station to what is now the Oakford. Am I correct? and if so are there any photos out there to prove it!! Get digging please!!

Stewart

[Riverside]

Sorry, but I only remember that place as the Berkshire Athaneum Club which was a grand looking place inside that creaked a lot! Later to become the Flyer and Firkin. I don't remember any bridge.

I do remember waiting for a bus (before the current Brunel Arcade/station complex was built) on the site of the current RailAir bus stop watching the mail bags get lifted up a slope into the old sorting office which would have been next door to the aforementioned pub (on the site of Aquis House now?? Symantec's old place before they moved to Green Park). I think there may be an image of it on the Reading Libraries' website of photos as well as some images posted here by other forumees.

[Les]

Stewart, I have no recollection of there being a bridge from the station to the Post Office. It would have been a significant structure which, I would have thought, not easily forgotten.

[OLDMAN]

No bridge that I recall but there used to be some underground stuff along with the bold subway for the station

I seem to remember being told there was a conveyor belt down there by someone who worked for the PO many years before so it may have reached this far

[Les]

Inthe good old days when the railways still held the franchise for shifting the mails across the country there used to be a fleet of three wheeler tractors (were they Fodens?)that hauled the mail from the station to the Post Offce building. There was a dedicated bit of the station, on the right hand side as you looked at the front of the station, with it's own loading platform on the road side.

[savagethegoat]

i think you are confused les.The three wheel yokes were Nationla Carriers and the PO had little 4 wheel electric tugs which used to pull thrree or four trailers over to the PO. NCL: were in Kings Meadow Rd

[Les]

Oh well, I stand corrected then Mr. Goat, thanks for straightening me out

[chris_j_wood]

I was with my son and his friends last Sunday at the Art & Craft Sunday at the Oakford Social Club (to me and you a pub) in Blagrave Street, opposite Reading Station.

None of my relatively youthful friends believed me when i said this was an old Post Office building, where once many years ago was a "bridge" well, I think more perhaps a conveyor belt? Which spanned from the Station to what is now the Oakford. Am I correct? and if so are there any photos out there to prove it!! Get digging please!!

Unfortunately I believe that your youthful friends were right to disbelieve you. I was a member of the old ICL social club, that rented the lower two floors of the building that is now the Oakfield Social Club. Our landlords, the Berkshire Athaneum Club, occupied the upper floors. That was the situation from 1976 until the early 1990s when the Athaneum sold the site to become the Flyer and Firkin pub, which later became the Oakford Social Club.

I'm not sure when the Athaneum Club moved in, but I do know that the building was originally built as the County Borough of Reading Education Offices. At the time is was notable for being the first steel-framed building built in Reading. It may well have stayed in that role until the local government reorganisation of the early 1970s, when responsibility for education was transferred from Reading to Berkshire. I never heard any indication that it had ever had any connection with the Post Office.

I think you are confusing the old Atheneum Club with its immediate neighbour to the east. This was the old Post Office Social Club, and it effectively sat in the corner of the yard at the back of the old sorting office. By the look of it, it was an old large house; I suspect that the post office yard (and possibly the sorting office) occupied its former garden. By the time I remember it (late 1970s/early 1980s) it was in a poor condition. I have a feeling it was demolished before the closure of sorting office, but I could be wrong in that. Certainly it had gone by the time the sorting office was redeveloped and, as said elsewhere, Aquis House now stands on the site. I don't remember a bridge.

[Squash]

In the 1950s and early 60s you could walk through an arch by the Post Office in Friar Street and come out opposite the Emmer Green/Donkin Hill bus stops roughly where the Heathrow bus now waits. I was very impressed with this short cut when I was a kid - it somehow seemed miraculous that a little walk through the Post Office brought you to the bus stop (this was after evening visits to the Gaumont with my mum when I was tired and my legs were little!). Savagethegoat is correct about the four-wheel electric tractors that used to haul trains of trolleys of packages into the postie entrance to the station. This was where we would bunk into the station for a bit of trainspotting without paying the extortionate price for a platform ticket. Emblazoned on my memory is the almost underworld vision of a Castle class engine racing through at the head of an up express one cold dark winter night. I swear he was doing 90, whistle held open and firelight glowing a bright red on the fireman shovelling coal for all his worth. It is hard to get across what an awesome and terrifying sight and sound this was - the engine swaying, whistle shrieking, exhaust hammering and then gone, guards van bucking at the rear and a great storm of dust and debris flying in its wake.

Sorry, got carried away there. I don't remember a bridge but there was a long conveyor belt bringing parcels from the sorting office to the waiting trolleys, inside the short cut.

[savagethegoat]

we used to use that alley too..i dont think we were meant to....also used to bunk into the station that way too!!! No castles in my day though...Westerns/Warships and Hymeks...

[OLDMAN]

I don't remember a bridge but there was a long conveyor belt bringing parcels from the sorting office to the waiting trolleys, inside the short cut.

I remember the post office arch but we didn’t go though that often as it was the wrong direction for us as a family

Don’t remember the conveyor myself but that may be the one my old mate talked about –

Still not sure if there are access tunnels down by the old subway, I remember they used to run some small luggage handlers down there when I walked through at times, and often wondered where they were going to / from?

[james obrien]

There was a metal clad conveyor belt that ran to the top floor of the building. It certainly did not run over to the station. Especially considering when what was there before the station was a car park. It could of even been stairs. I will have to ask some older colleagues of mine, as I started in Caversham Road. I remember conversations about a conveyor belt going to the top of the building. This could have been for collection mail, as the processing floor was on the top floor. Outgoing mail would have been sent down shoots or lifts. There were no parcels sorted here, they were sorted in Richfield avenue along with foreign mail, and a county distribution office. Parcels moved to Winnersh, all other functions from the other two sites went to Caversham Road in 1987. Datapost hung on at Richfield avenue till Parcle Force took over Datapost in the mid to late 90's the Readign Post Office Sports and Social Club remains in Richfield Avenue.

But now we are scatterd round Wiltshire and Berkshire, the fisr lot of us went to Langley when the Worldwide Distribution centre opened, the others went to the enlarged Swindon Mail Centre, (Thames Valley Mail Centre), or remained on collection and delivery work in the area. I went to Langley about a year after Reading's foreign section transfered to Langley, as I was offered HGV training, with a job in the transport section there. For those who don't know where the international site is, you can see it as you pass junction 5 of the M4, look for the blue and white flats, and you will see an office park, we are in the wide and long building at the back. This handles all outgoing international mail, and most incoming international mail, it's the sorting floor is the size of ten football pitches, and is the most advanced sorting office in Western Europe.