SEBA - South East Berkshire Association

Buying Finchampstead Ridges

The following article by a former Chairman of the Finchampstead Ridges Committee first appeared in the Finchampstead Magazine (in two parts, June & July 2006), and is reproduced with permission.

In 1911 the Bearwood Estate was put up for sale. Not national news perhaps but locally cataclysmic. This vast estate built up over the previous hundred years by the Walter family, for generations proprietors of The Times newspaper, covered an area stretching from Reading to Yateley. A sale map covering some "outlying parts" of the property covers most of Finchampstead from the junction of Finchampstead Road and Sandhurst Road down to the outskirts of Yateley and from The Railway line to west of the Village. This did, of course include The Ridges. The Walter family had built the road that runs across the crest of the hill to join with the great ceremonial planting of Wellingtonia Avenue. Since the building of this road 50 years before, the Walters had allowed free public use of the hill which was the scene of all manner of local activities; there was no Memorial Park then. The Ridges was even more widely known for the splendid views, which can still be enjoyed, to Highclere in the West and to Hindhead in the South. The views then were even more extensive, for there were very few trees and no houses and people used to come from as far as Reading to picnic and enjoy the prospect of over twenty miles to the south and west.

The sale of the estate must have been appalling news for the property owners in the area, all the leases which had been secure for up to a century were suddenly up for sale and might be bought out by a grasping or, at least, an unsympathetic landlord. People must have been wondering desperately if they could themselves afford to buy the lease on their house or farm or woodland and the periodic auctions of groups of the hundred or more lots must have seen desperation as well as triumph. But very early on in the last months of 1911 and early 1912 plans were being made at least to save the Ridges for universal use.

A meeting was convened on Friday 8th March 1912 at the Wellington Hotel, the great local hostelry of those days. It stood where Wellesley Drive is now and the building survived into the 1980s. The meeting was held in the "fine Lounge and Winter Garden" recently added by the proud proprietor, Mr James, himself a tenant of the estate. All the great and good of the area were there: The Lord Lieutenant, the Mayor of Reading, the Mayor of Wokingham, the Master of Wellington and many other local worthies such as our two Finchampstead VCs, Col Jones and Sir John Watson, Mr Crow representing John Walter and others from a surprisingly wide area: Blackwater, Winnersh, Windlesham, even Stoke Talmadge arid Hatfield Peverell. There was also Mr Hamer representing the National Trust, still quite a new organisation having been founded in 1895. In all 41 people attended, all upper or middle class - there were, of course, with the possible exception of the proprietor Mr James, no "common people"; this was after all 1912.

The Lord Lieutenant, J Herbert Benyon was voted into the chair, being especially thanked for coming all the way from Englefield, obviously considered a significant journey in these days of few motor cars and poor roads. A scheme was proposed by Mr W J Toye of Sandhurst to purchase an area to include the summit of The Ridges. He pointed out that the short space between the road and the steep scarp slope made it unattractive for building and suggested that the trustees of the estate might donate the land.

Mr Hamer said that The National Trust would be prepared to hold the property for the benefit of the public. He explained that though some people thought the Trust was a wealthy organisation it had no funds to buy property. It was proposed and approved that the scheme be accepted and a committee be formed for the purpose of implementing the scheme with powers to add to its number, collect subscriptions and to enlarge the scheme according to circumstances.

The first Committee was then formed headed by the Lord Lieutenant, The Mayor of Reading, the Mayor of Wokingham and the Master of Wellington. Of the other eleven, seven were men, the only women being Miss Rose Kingsley of Eversley, presumably a relative of the Rev Charles, Miss Blair of Crowthome and Mrs Laurence Currie of Minley Manor. Only three of the men were from Finchampstead; the others came from Reading, Sandhurst, Wokingham (two), and Yateley. All these members were "gentlefolk" so it was a very typical committee of its day and a fairly prestigious one at that. Any romantic idea that this was a populist movement to buy the Ridges by and for the "people of Finchampstead" receives no support from the surviving documents. Indeed there is no suggestion that "people" in this sense were consulted or even considered.

No doubt they all went home after a happy and congenial afternoon but though it may all seem strange to us almost a century later, they had set in motion the establishment of one of the best loved open spaces in the area.

The first meeting of the new Committee was on 21st March in the Wellington Hotel. Needless to say the membership was very different from the initial list of those elected at the exciting and enthusiastic inaugural meeting on the 8th. The Lord Lieutenant and the Mayors of Reading and Wokingham had served their purpose in getting things off the ground, and now retired gracefully to play no part in the tiresome business of fund raising and negotiation. The Master of Wellington - being left as the only holder of public office - was voted into the chair. It was decided to ask Mr John Simonds of Simonds Bank to put up a subscription list at their Reading office and branches. Various others of the great and good were added to the committee and letters from The National Trust were read confirming their readiness to accept the property if successfully acquired.

The proposal at the inaugural meeting had been to acquire 15 - 20 acres; it was now decided to try to obtain an option for one year on 100 acres. A subcommittee was formed to negotiate with the trustees of the Walter estate "to endeavour to find out to what extent they would probably be prepared to cooperate in this scheme and what form that cooperation would be likely to take".

The subcommittee met in the Masters Lodge at Wellington 12 days later to discuss these matters with Mr Trollope representing the estate. The subcommittee suggested a price of £50 per acre for 111 acres or possibly a rather higher price per acre for a smaller area. Mr Trollope agreed to put the offer to Mr John Walter and said that he was authorised by him to say that he personally was prepared to contribute liberally to the scheme. When he had left the meeting it was decided to go ahead with a public appeal.

At the next meeting of the full committee it was agreed to make a formal offer of £55 per acre for 111 acres, but on 24th April Mr Trollope came back with a counter offer of 75 acres for £4,125 but adding that if this was accepted John Walter would personally contribute £400. Mr Howard Palmer from Heathlands suggested that they speak to Dr Warre, a personal friend of the Walter family, to enquire "if they are desirous of presenting the land if their friends and neighbours agree to erect a memorial to perpetuate the memory of the Walter family". Clearly the family didn't see any fun in this for no more is heard of it. In mid-May a final agreement was reached to buy 60 acres for £3000 and the appeal for funds was launched.

Clearly the committee was not yet fully confident of reaching the target and decided that now the first list of those who had subscribed had gone through, if a further batch of preliminary appeals did not produce the balance there should be a general appeal. It is not clear what was the basis of this preliminary appeal but it certainly seems to have been local and addressed to the relatively wealthy, there does not seem to have been any attempt to seek the pennies and sixpences of the working people. There were in any case few local people - probably not more than a few hundred -in a position to contribute, and the total would have been insignificant in a sum of £3000.

By October the fund stood at £2555.15.00 and the general appeal went ahead. Mr Hamer "expressed himself pleased with the very liberal response" and offered on behalf of the National Trust to write to The Times and some of the other London papers. The letter to The Times appeared on 5th October outlining the scheme and appealing for subscriptions. It also mentioned that John Walter himself was contributing £500. The letter was signed by H D Rawnsley and S H Hamer.

The sale was finally agreed in January 1913 and the property put in the care of The National Trust; the sixty acres remain the total area of the Ridges property. A condition of the sale was that the land be fenced but it was unanimously voted that no such condition be accepted but that the boundaries be defined by marker stones. The stones are there still but the idea of maintaining an open hillside was lost when neighbouring plots were sold and the owners fenced them.

The valuation put on the land seems, even for this time, to be fairly low. There are several possible reasons for this. As Mr Toye had pointed out at the inaugural meeting, the top of the hill is an awkward site for a house, the land is very infertile, there was certainly no mains drainage (there still isn't) and there may have been lack of other services, finally the vendors, being sympathetic to the scheme, may have been prepared to accept a favourable price. In fact the first house on the opposite side of the road was not built until the twenties and though this may have been partly due to the war, so soon to break out, many of the other plots were not taken until the thirties.

It was proposed that a ceremony of dedication be held and a brochure be presented to all subscribers, I don't know if this was ever done but if it was I don't know of any surviving copy.

This page is based on an article in the SEBA newsletter dated December 2006.