Predecessors to Radley News

Radley News is the name of the current monthly village magazine. It had three predecessor journals (to our knowledge), all published monthly under the auspices of Radley Church but with wider village news too. The timing and reason(s) for the changes in title and scope are not clear.

The Club’s holdings of these three series is far from compete but what it does have provides a flavour of the activities in the village in their era plus various useful pieces of information.

The collection is the result of donations made by various people to the Club for its archive, in some cases following the death of a relative who lived in Radley.

Radley History Club has editions from 1895 to 1900 in its journals archive. This series was a mixture of Radley church/village news and wider religious material that seems to have been provided to parishes on a national basis. The original material is in good condition and held in volumes bound together for each year. Only the pages with Radley news have been digitised.

Year with link to PDFNotes
1894August only; Called ‘The Gospeller’ and appears to be a predecessor of ‘Church Monthly’
1895All months (printed copies are in a bound volume)
1896All months (printed copies are in a bound volume)
1897Issue for each month except February and March, which may not have been issued. From May, the bound volume also includes the parish of Marcham.
1898All months. Bound volume also includes the parish of Marcham.
1899All months. Bound volume also includes the parish of Marcham.
1900All months. Bound volume also includes the parish of Marcham.

Radley History Club has editions from 1945 to 1956, with material now limited to Radley matters and containing several pages of paid-for adverts for local companies. The original material is in good condition and held in volumes bound together by a six-year period, with an issue for each month.

NB The PDFs have been compressed to reduce size of the file but are still of the order of 10MB.

Year with link to PDFNotes
1945Complete
1946Complete
1947Complete
1945Complete
1949Complete
1950Complete
1951Complete
1952Complete
1953Complete
1954Complete
1955Complete
1956Complete

The content and format of this series were essentially the same as the early editions of Radley News. The last issue was in December 1970 and was numbered 143, suggesting this series started in 1959. The collection is limited with very incomplete coverage and some of the typed pages are in poor condition.

Year with link to PDFNotes
1963December only
1964January only
1965February and October only
1966July and September only
1967May and December only
1968May and November only
1969January, August and October only; August missing p.5 & p.20; October missing pp.3-4
1970June and September only

Read issues held by Radley History Club of the current village magazine called Radley News