Windsor Berkshire

Wishing you all a Happy New Year

regards

the Windsor Berkshire website team

A royal estate survey revealed over 1,000 species of fungi in Windsor great park. About 40 of them are believed to exist nowhere else on earth.

I saw an old (late Victorian) map of Clewer which has the Maidenhead Road (in front of the site of what is now Windsor Racecourse) listed as Surlyhall Road.

Does anyone know of other name changes in Windsor?

Another bit of church trivia for you. The Parish Church of St. John The Baptist, right in the centre of Windsor contains some rather fine panels carved by the famed woodcarver Grinling Gibbons (1648-1720) . The panels show a pelican feeding its young.

Grinling Gibbons was patronised by a succession of British Monarchs. Charles II, William III and George Ist all comissioned carvings from him and the woodwork at Hamton Court Palace that he created is world renown.

''The old churchyard of Clewer has witnessed many strange and touching scenes during the long roll of centuries that is has borne the designation of "God's Acre", still, perhaps never one so unusual or pathetic as that which occurred on Wednesday, when the ocean-laved remains of a Clewer laddie, rescued from the surging billows of the Atlantic, were laid to rest in that quiet and peaceful burial ground. Owen George Allum was 17 years old and was a Clewer St. Stephen Old Boy. His was one of the bodies afterwards recovered by the SS Mackay Bennett and taken ashore where his father, who had awaited a living son, could only identify and claim his dead body. The steamship company offered to convey the remains back to England. Mr. Allum therefore decided to leave his position in the States and accompany his son's body back to Clewer, so that it might rest beside that of a little sister. The beautiful burial service was impressively read by the Reverend G. Budibent (Curate at Clewer) and the solemnity of the scene was further increased by the felt stillness of the hundreds of people surrounding.''
Windsor, Eton & Slough Express - May 25, 1912

The grave of Owen George Allum can be found in Clewer Churchyard at the end of church. Look for a medium sized square edged white cross on the right close to the boatyard wall.

Electrical Power restored to central Windsor residents at 21.44pm following a short outage.

At 9.35 this evening a power surge ran through the grid in Windsor leaving residents and shops on St Leonards Road without power.