BYGONES: River ambulance set up for festival in 1970s A RIVER ambulance was set to patrol the Thames in 1971, just in time to keep visitors to Reading’s first ever pop festival. Two boats, built and manned by members of the St. John Ambulance Brigade, had been under construction for the last few months. The new craft would undertake river trials in the coming weeks and would be fully operational after crews had completed their training. The Duke of Edinburgh visited Bearwood College to mark their 50th anniversary on its current site and after inspecting a parade of ‘Foundationers’ he toured classrooms and lecture rooms.
‘Photograph of Edith Morley in her College gowns’, c.1893. Pic by University of Reading Professor Edith Julia Morley MBE was a professor of English Language at the University of Reading, and is credited with being the first female professor in Britain. Aside from her own career successes, she was also an active supporter of the a number of Suffragette campaigns, and a member of the British socialist organisation The Fabian Society. In 1950 she was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), which was awarded for her work setting up the Reading Refugee Committee, and assisting Belgian-Jewish refugees during the Second World War.
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The blue plaques The four blue plaques are dedicated to Dominic Barbieri, Phoebe Cusden, Henry Addington and Thomas Huntley. Mr Barbieri was an Italian theologian who was prominent in spreading Catholicism in England and died in Reading. His plaque is on a modern block of flats on Caversham Road before the railway bridge. Ms Cusden was an educationalist, peace campaigner, socialist, feminist and Reading councillor, who was once mayor of Reading and founded the Reading Dusseldorf Association in 1947. Her blue plaque can normally be found on Castle Street but is currently not on display. Reading Civic Society has removed the plaque temporarily to replace the “warped” wooden base with something more appropriate.