Arborfield
Local History Society

 1946 Aerial Photo of Loddon Bridge

RAF aerial photo of Lower Arborfield and Shinfield, dated 10th March 1946, ref. 4042, reproduced by permission of the National Monuments Record, English Heritage.

This view is of the A327 from Shinfield eastwards to Bridge House. The River Loddon is very clear in this view.

Note that there is a very sharp bend in the A327 on the Shinfield side. This was an accident black spot, and the road has since been re-aligned. Its passing was mourned by the columnist known as 'Rustic' in his weekly column in the Reading Mercury of August 5th 1966:

“A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire”. Such has been the Eversley road for as long as any of us can remember, and until only a very few years ago it was still a fairly quiet country thoroughfare.

But now the authorities have come (I’m still thinking of G.K.C.) “to straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made”. They’re straightening out what is said to be a dangerous bend, and no doubt it is dangerous to those who must tear along the 16 miles from Reading to Camberley in as many minutes. Certainly it is a hazardous stretch for anyone old-fashioned enough to want to walk – as G.K.C. would have liked – from the old Parrot to the Bull.

That little spot by the bridges midway between Shinfield and Arborfield, now disturbed by the engineers and surveyors proving Euclid’s axiom that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, has ever been one of rare charm. To lean over the parapet of a summer’s eve and listen to the music of the Loddon waters – and perchance to catch the momentary flash of a kingfisher (“It was the rainbow that gave thee birth”), has been one of the joys of the A327; just the way home.

'Rustic' (real name Anthony Walton) lived in Walden Avenue, and often wrote about Arborfield, though rarely by name - read some of his columns here.

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