As part of Southeast Communities Rail Partnership project to produce 200 Blue Plaques for Railway 200, here is the story of Charles Parker Sharpe.
Charles was born in Slough in 1878, one of 9 children. He was employed as a cabinet maker, and married a lady called Elizabeth. By 1911 they were living at 70 Cromwell Road, Caversham with their two young children Ernest and Dorothy. Sadly Elizabeth died at 44. Charles remarried a couple of years later to Marian Parker and they had a daughter together, Marion Joyce.
By 1921, Charles and his family had moved to 19 Lorne Street in Reading. He was working as a carpenter and joiner for the Great Western Railway’s signal department on Caversham Road – possibly making the wooden semaphore signals, or even the woodwork of signal boxes themselves? Son Ernest, now 16, was a turner and fitter for John Warrick the Cycle & Motor manufacturer; who at the time was making bodywork for three-wheeled delivery motor vehicles destined for Selfridges and the Post Office.
Charles was still working as a railway carpenter during the Second World War, he was in his 60s, and was actually living right beside Winnersh station in 1939 (or Winnersh Halt as it was known then) at the house called Lockesley, at 19 Robin Hood Lane.
Daughter Marion’s husband Victor McLeonards was the son of an aeronautical engineer, and grandson of another railway carpenter at Caversham Road signal works – a colleague of his father-in-law Charles Sharpe!
Research and imagery: Danny Coope.
