The Willis Museum, Basingstoke, April 11th
I was honoured to be invited to speak about ‘The Simonds Family of Reading’ and their connections to Basingstoke. Here is the presentation.
Welcome!
Welcome to our website, which I have set up to encourage further research, archiving and accessibility to the history of the H&G Simonds Ltd Brewery of Reading, its business at home and abroad, its estate, beers, memorabilia and of all the people associated with them throughout the nearly 200 years of its existence.
I have also included a little about the ‘J&C Simonds Bank’ that was founded in Reading by Charles Simonds and others in 1791 and was sold to Barclays in 1913.
This is and will remain my hobby and as such will also remain very much ‘work in progress’ with consequential inconsistencies and even errors! So – if you have any constructive comments, relevant historical information, images or documents to share, it would be great to hear from you through the ‘Contact’ button.
On a Personal Note:
My lovely niece has contracted the little known and even less understood Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma. If you would like to know more of her or of this cancer, or even to contribute to its cure, please click HERE:
New pub images loaded!
There were about 65 new pub images loaded in the spring with another 25 in October! Nearly all kindly contributed by John Berry. Some have not been identified – so please do have a look and see if you can help with this?
Hop Leaf Gazette – Archive
Our thanks to Karen & Gillian who lent me their grandfather George Bennet’s precious copy of a rare Hop Leaf Gazette dated May 1932. It is now available to all of you on THIS PAGE They also contributed some images of his Brewery ‘life’. If there are any more Gazettes ‘out there’ do please let me borrow them briefly – so they can go up on this site and become more widely available.