Website Editor’s Preface
Thanks and acknowledgement
This complete text of ‘Southall 830 – 1982’ is reproduced within the Southall-history.co.uk website by kind permission of Mr Arthur Meads, whose gracious consent for the use of his father’s work has been of incalcuable value in the furtherence of the site’s aim of spreading a greater awareness of Southall’s past.
Southall 830 – 1982 is the concluding work in a trilogy of books combining careful historical research with the fascinating personal recollections of Mr Richard James Meads, a lifelong resident of Southall since 1904. His other volumes being; Growing-up With Southall From 1904 and The Maypole and Southall Green respectively.
‘Southall 830 – 1982’ is the sole copyright of Mr Richard James Meads, all rights reserved to Mr Arthur Meads.
Notes on the online typeset of Southall 830 – 1982
It was the original intention of this Editor to present a near facimilie copy of Southall 830 – 1982 within this site – unfortunately, this has not proved possible. Richard Meads’ original manuscript was typewritten with many non-standard spacing conventions (such as multi tab gaps between words) in order for the text to appear attractive and symetrical and fit well within margins.
This was achieved as intended when typeset for printing on a physical press, however, the constraints of presenting this work in an HTML environment have precluded the achievement of this goal. Likewise, within the environment of a physical tome, page text can end halfway through a sentence with the reader instantly able to regain the thread of the text by browsing opposite or overleaf: in a discrete ‘tabbed’ page environment this causes some inconvenience, and so all pages conclude only on complete paragraph endings, once again, differing from the original work. Because of this, the original publication’s page numbering convention has also been dispensed with as each web page tab would bear no correlation to its correspondent in the original printed version.
All that remains is to wish the reader every enjoyment in discovering Southall’s long and often unsuspected history through this, Richard Meads third book; widely considered a difinitive work on Southall’s past.