January 29th. 2000

Next club meeting Monday 7th. February 2000.

At Abbey Baptist Church, Abbey Square.

Meeting commences at 7.00 pm.

New Venue

Notice the new meeting place for the monthly meeting.

The Club has lost the use of the Reading Library and we have moved to the:

ABBEY CHURCH, ABBEY SQUARE.

The entrance to the Church is about 50 yards past the entrance to the Library, on the same side of the road. There are about 6 steps leading up to front door or there is a ramp to the right of the door. The first two club meetings will be in the church, on the ground floor, not in the Brookside room on the first floor as planned, as a lift is being installed, preventing the use of Brookside. Mr. Williams the care taker will be on the premises to let members in. The Club's library has been moved to the new venue and is installed in the Brookside room which we will eventually move into when the lift installation has been completed. Please have a look at both rooms and give your comments to a committee member as we may make the meeting room on the ground floor permanent. Opposite the church is a small car park which will hold about 12 cars. This will be open for members use. Please park neatly so that we can get as many cars in as possible.

January meeting

This was a talk by Mr. William Spencer entitled "The Public Record Office and the First World War" This was a very interesting talk, by a good speaker who knows his subject.

This is a very complicated subject so lets hope that my notes are accurate. Mr. Spencer is ex forces and has been with the public records office for 13 years. WWl medal information is a growth industry. There is a 75 year rule in force and some are records are just becoming available, especially of those soldiers who also served in WW2. The medal is a basic disc with a ribbon and contains Service, Name, Rank, Number and Regiment. 15 million medals were issued but not all have been collected. It is still possible to claim medals if they have not been issued. You can visit the Records office for research. Most medals from WW1 are named which makes them unique. More than five million answered the call for WW1 and records exist for all of these people from August 1914 to the end of 1918. A lot of service records were lost to enemy bombing in 1940. The medal records are for campaign and gallantry medals.

The Records office has 3,000 large boxes containing 3.4 million records on card. This is slowly being transferred to Micro-Fiche. Ten percent of these cards also have information on the reverse and the medal records also contain some of the person's military career. Other ranks received their medals automatically while officers had to apply for their medals. Some officers did not apply, one being T.B. Lawrence and another was S. Sassoon. Because some officers did not apply there is no medal record of them. Additional to this is the medal issues for the Royal Navy, the Royal Flying Corps and Nurses. This is only a small amount of the information given by Mr. Spencer.

Those members who did not attend missed an excellent talk. I am sure that the Club will ask for a further talk from Mr. Spencer.

February Meeting

This is the Quiz night. Again it is Alistair McKay who is setting the questions. Those who were at his last quiz will know how good he is. There is a small prize for the winning team.

Social events for 2000

The committee has been looking into two possible social events for 2000. The first is a skittles evening, the second is a trip to the Ashmolean in Oxford.

The skittles evening was a popular event for a number of years and after a two-year rest we propose to reintroduce the event if there is sufficient support. We would like to hold this event on a Saturday evening in mid-March. Three venues have been approached and all have a minimum requirement for the size of patty. The most central venue is the Gardener's Arms at Caversham which has a minimum of 20 people and will cost about £9 per person, including skittles and a meal.

The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford is one of the greatest museums in the country and contains many noteworthy exhibits. The museum holds a collection of about 400,000 coins from all over the world and at any time a small selection of these is on show in the Heberden Coin Room. Although the trip would be a general one to view the exhibits in the museum, we also hope to have a short talk from the Heberden Coin Room curator (Nick Mayhew) on the fascinating history of the room itself. We would plan to make the trip on a Friday or Saturday either just before or after Easter. The cost of the trip will probably not be much more than the cost of travel to Oxford, though depending on numbers we may hire a minibus.

A list will be circulated at the February meeting of the club and we'd like anyone interested in attending a skittles evening or a trip to the Ashmolean to sign up. Other members can contact a member of the committee to express their interest

Future Events

Coin Fair. Saturday 5th.. February. Cumberland Hotel, Marble Arch London W1.

Coin Fair. Saturday 26th. February. Commonwealth Institute. Kensington. London W8.

Coin Fair Sunday 13th February. National Motor Cycle Museum Bickenhill Birmingham.

20 Years ago

The Speaker fell ill and had to go to hospital. Two Club Members stood in for him. Michael gave a talk on Maria Theresa Thalers, explaining how to tell the originals from restrikes. Albert gave an interesting and humorous talk on incidents and experiences encountered during his research into his hobby.