SCRCA Note: Material relating to Hellifield station bookstalls in the University of Reading W.H. Smith Archive

Submitted by mark.harvey / Fri, 08/07/2022 - 15:51
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Following receipt of the information regarding railway bookstalls operated by W. H. Smiths from Christopher Rule, the SCRCA Project Coordinator contacted Reading University on 1st July 2022 with the following request for information:

Are you able to provide any additional information relating to W.H. Smith's operations at Hellifield and / or the associated bookstall structures? We are especially keen to ascertain the number of different bookstall structures and their precise or approximate dates of construction / operation.

The reply quoted below was kindly provided on 5th July 2022 by the Reading Room Assistant at the University of Reading, Special Collections (University of Reading, Redlands Road, Reading, RG1 5EX):

I have looked through our catalogue but there are only a couple of mentions of Hellifield in our W H Smith archive. There appears to be a record of the managers by station between 1894 and 1956 (WHS A 121/398), and a record of receipts and expenses between 1893/94 and 1902/03 (WHS A 229/332). These may give an insight into the operations of the bookstall but I don't believe they'll contain any information about it's construction.

You are more than welcome to view this material here in our reading room if you wish. We do also offer a digital copying service that can provide PDF scans of material, however these records may be quite extensive.

Given our distance from Reading and the low probability of finding information relating to the structures, we chose not to arrange a visit to the archive. However, we've uploaded the information to the SCRCA web-portal as it may be of use / interest to other people (e.g. those researching family histories).