Arborfield
Local History Society

The 'Mercury' & the Home Front in WW1

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The 'Reading Mercury' and the 'Berkshire Chronicle' were very conservative in their formats.

There was another more populist newspaper, the 'Reading Standard', which in contrast was filled with photographs during the War, especially cameo pictures of soldiers volunteering, mentioned in dispatches, wounded or killed.

The 'Reading Standard' produced a hard-back commemorative series after the War, which can be seen at the Reading Local Studies Library, and is now available in CD form from the Berkshire Family History Society.

The Reading Mercury and Arborfield, 1914 – 1918

How was life in Arborfield portrayed in the local newspaper in WW1?

The weekly newspaper for the country areas of Berkshire in 1914 was the Reading Mercury, published on Saturday mornings.
The usual format was 12 pages, with classified adverts on the front page.
Inside, there was a mixture of national and local news, including regular sections on Parliament and overseas.
It had no photographs, but did have line drawings, mainly in the adverts.
After War was declared, the paper shrank to 8 pages, but after a couple of years it grew to 10, mainly in order to report on the Berkshire soldiers and to list the casualties.
Shortages forced the paper back to 8 pages, with a disclaimer on the front page stating that there were no spare copies printed.

This set of topics is composed mainly of quotations from articles covering Arborfield and Newland, the Remount Depot, Barkham and Bearwood (the mansion is almost entirely within the parish of Newland).

Inevitably, many articles cover the wider area, especially Reading and Wokingham, and are included where it is thought that they would have been noted by Arborfield residents. Several residents, including John Simonds of Newlands, worked in Reading (he was the Borough Treasurer as well as a local director of Barclays Bank); we know of at least one apprentice who worked in Reading, until he went to the Front and lost his life there.

The text is more or less as published, but the paragraph layout has been altered to make it more readable. Many articles appeared as a single large paragraph.

Images are taken from the Classified and other Ads, including this now-controversial symbol: