About

Spencers Wood Local History Group are a study and research group rather than a society. Our aim is to record and retain as much history as we can about our part of Shinfield because there is so much housing development going on in our locality.

The group consists of (left to right) Lesley Rolph, Patricia Green, Margaret Bampton, Mary Wheway, Jackie Blow, Jeannie Brice and Sheila Davis.(Sheila was not available when we had this picture taken)

Sheila Davis

We have published three books:- Our Village of Spencers Wood (now sold out) ; The History of Lambs Lane School 1908-2008 and Celebrating the Centenary of Ryeish Green School 1910-2010. You can link to these through the Publication pages – see if you can help us with our ongoing research! This is an on-going project so we are always happy to receive photographs of the area to show the differences over the years, as can be seen here.

Please email us if you have anything that you think we may be interested in.

Barbara as a child

Barbara Debney

Background of the Group
In 1994, Jeremy Saunders placed an advertisement in the local newspaper, suggesting a local history group was set up. There was already a local society

but Spencers Wood seemed to be left out. Many people were interested at first but the numbers eventually got down to four (Margaret Bampton, Jackie Blow, Barbara Debney and Jill Sylvester). Unfortunately we lost one of the original members, Barbara Debney who passed away on 1st July 2008. She is sorely missed.

Group photograph above by Spencers Wood photographer Simon Kemp.