Kathleen Reed (née Horner) was born in Swanmore in 1914. The Horners were a long-established Swanmore family active in the village since the early 1800s and variously wheelwrights, carpenters and builders. Kath’s father, Albert Horner, was a motor engineer who also ran a taxi business and operated petrol pumps from a site in New Road (later Brooks’ Garage). As a teenager Kath helped work the pumps and sell petrol.

 

Robert Reed arrived in Swanmore in 1924 when his father Frederick acquired the lease of the brickworks that occupied the area where Crofton Way would later be built. The Reeds had come from Southall in Middlesex and the family had been brickmakers since at least 1812. Sadly Frederick died just three years later in 1927 leaving his 17-year-old son Robert (“Bob”) unable to take over the lease. The brickworks eventually closed in the late 1930s. Bob, meanwhile, went to work for Ordnance Survey in Southampton as a cartographer – where he stayed for 35 years. 

 

Bob and Kath married in 1935 and moved into a house in Broad Lane that Bob had had built on a one-acre plot shared with a friend, who built a bungalow on his side of the plot. The couple had two children: Patricia and Pauline who still lives in the Broad Lane house.  

 

Bob Reed was a founder member of Swanmore Amateur Dramatic Society (SADS) and looked after sound and lighting for many years – often helped by Pauline. He also served on Swanmore Parish Council for nine years in the 1950s and ‘60s and was a member of the Village Hall Committee from 1957, when the committee was established, until 1978. In those days the “village hall” was a converted British Legion hall built after the First World War. The committee organised various events and, notably, regular and popular dances which brought complaints of “loud music and rowdiness” from neighbouring householders. 

 

The search for a larger site – further away from residential areas – as well as the necessary fund-raising to build a more modern village hall, began in 1970. A site opposite Swanmore College was eventually leased from the Swanmore Educational Trust. Fundraising continued throughout Bob’s time on the committee and building work finally started in 1978, with the hall opening in May 1980.  

 

Bob Reed died in 1999 shortly after his 90th birthday. 

 

Like Bob, Kath was a founder member of SADS where she organised refreshments – both for actors and audience – at rehearsals and performances for many years. She was also much involved in village life as an active member of the Swanmore branches of Mothers’ Union, Young Wives Group and the Women’s Institute. In 1943 she was a founder member of the Swanmore branch of the Royal British Legion (Women’s Section) and served as Chairman for three years in the 1960s. She remained a member until her death, aged 101, in 2016.  

 

Throughout their long lives both Kath and Bob contributed their time and energy to numerous Swanmore community groups and will always be remembered at Reed Close.