Shopping in a Small Berkshire Town

Last weekend had been forecast to be bad weather and I had planned some crafting, but I woke on Saturday morning to a blue sky and sunshine so decided to make the most of it with a morning out in Hungerford. It's about a 20 minute drive, but by the time I got there the sun had disappeared and it had started to drizzle and my photos reflect that, still I thought you might like to see anyway. It's quite busy with traffic on a Saturday.

Hungerford is a small market town on the western edge of Berkshire which dates back to at least the 12th century. It's a pretty place to visit on a sunny day as it has a river and canal where you can take a trip on a barge or just walk along the canal path.

If you go off the main street into the back lanes there are some very pretty houses and cottages.

My favourite is this house on the main street which has an iron footbridge from the road to the front door. I'd love to live in a house like this.

Hungerford has a quaint tradition called Tutti-Day (2nd Tuesday after Easter) where the town crier summons to commoners to court to elect new administrative officers, while two Tutti-men visit each house that has common rights to collect a penny. You can read more about it here.

I had an ulterior motive in going, an Antiques Market in the Town Hall and to visit the Hungerford Antiques Arcade.

The antiques fair is held once a month and is quite small, about 20 stalls - I don't go very often as it has proper antiques prices and I rarely find anything there. This time though, I found something I'd been after for ages - a vintage fan. It's quite battered, but I don't mind that and it works. Just need a heatwave now so I can use it.

There were a couple of jewellery stalls with some gorgeous trinkets, I bought this sparkly pendant too, which my lampshade kindly agreed to model for me.

There was a notice in the town hall about a jumble sale taking place later on in the morning, so I trotted off there in the hope of finding lots of bargains. Once again, not being first in the queue I think the bargains were snapped up before me, but I found this pretty storage tin for 30p.

I'd been eyeing up a similar one in the antiques centre in Marlborough for a few months, that one was more battered and £6 which is why I never bought it, this was a much better buy I think! I also bought a box of vintage lotto counters for 50p.

Back on the high street I checked out all the charity shops and then went to the Antiques Arcade. I like this arcade as it's quite large and has variety of different stalls and prices. Not guaranteed to always find something there, but I love browsing there. I did happen to find a few more bits and bobs though.

Two big bags of lace and doylies and another bag of sparkly bits. Woodland Snap cards and Lucie Atwell's Book of Little Verses. Two copies of 'Home Notes by Isobel' from 1900 - I'll show more on those another time, a couple of tablecloths and a pretty violets plate.

There were quite a few lace doylies in the bag of lace that I bought, these are still very easy to find but there's only so much room in a house for doylies. I've been trying to think of ways to use them in crafting where they don't obviously look like doylies - I decided to cut one up (and actually, it wasn't very difficult to do that) and use it on this cushion I made in the week.

I hope your weekend has been good, mine has been rather painful as with the snow forecast I decided to mow the grass on Friday and went about it rather too enthusiastically with the result that I have aches and pains all over. There have been a lot of ooching and ow-ing noises eminating from me this weekend and I have taken on an alarming resemblance to Quadimodo.

You may have noticed the rooster picture at the top of my sidebar, this is my contribution to the Rooster Parade for which BJ is collecting pictures. Entries must be in by Tuesday 7th April, so if you have a rooster (of any shape or form) why not join in.

Dear, sweet Louise at Home is Where the Heart Is gave me the 'You Make My Day' award last week, which is also in my Sidebar - thank you so much Louise, I'd like to award it straight back to you!

Here's my obligatory picture of the snow in my garden this morning, it was a lovely sight - by lunchtime it had all but gone!

Hope you all have a lovely week, and for those in the UK that your toes don't get too cold.

Lucy x