Great West Way® Travel Magazine | Issue 01

“Caversham’s award-winning pub, the Fox &
Hounds is where (in 1960) Paul McCartney and
John Lennon played their only gig as The Nerk
Twins just before they formed The Beatles.”
band - Brian May and Roger Taylor - and the rest is history.
Staying with music, composer Edward Elgar (1857-
1934) is best associated with the Malvern Hills which
inspired many of his most popular compositions.
However, he was also a regular visitor to Berkshire, and
often stayed and composed - most notably his renowned
Cello Concerto - at a mansion in Monkey Island Lane,
Bray, Maidenhead.
The house was later named Long White Cloud (the
Maori name for New Zealand) by a more recent resident,
Formula One legend Stirling Moss.
You’ll find the pretty village of Cookham three miles
north of Maidenhead, once home to Kenneth Grahame
(1859-1932), author of The Wind in the Willows.
He lived with his grandmother at The Mount in
Cookham Dean and it’s generally accepted that the river
scenes in the children’s classic were inspired by the stretch
between Cookham and Henley with Winter Hill above it.
Just over 10 miles further west, you will find
Caversham’s award-winning pub, The Fox & Hounds
where (in 1960) Paul McCartney and John Lennon played
their only gig as The Nerk Twins just before they formed
The Beatles. The blue plaque is on the wall just before you
step inside - where it is also said the pair worked behind
the bar on occasion, where at the time Paul’s cousin ran
the pub.
Blue plaques don’t just celebrate the great and the
good - buildings can get the star treatment too. Travel
a little further west to Thatcham in Berkshire and you’ll
find a plaque outside another pub - The Kings Head in
the Broadway, commemorating where Britain’s first mail
coach changed horses at the old coaching inn between
Bristol and London on August 3, 1784.
Up until then, it took two to three days for post to
travel from London to Bristol, but the stage coach system
cut this down to just over 16 hours by dividing the route
into stages with fresh horses at each stop.
Head west from Thatcham to the market town of
Newbury. Best known for its racecourse, there’s also a
large plaque commemorating renowned civil engineer
John Rennie (1761-1821) and Newbury Lock - the first to
be built on the Kennet & Avon Canal. →
Pictured
left-below:
British
Olympic
gold medal
winner Ed
McKeever’s
gold-painted
postbox;
Hollywood
movie legend
Cary Grant
and Actress
Diana Dors
Blue Plaque
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