After seeing a social media posting bemoaning the fact that the town’s Victorian terrace house signs had been allowed to deteriorate the Society felt that this was a project worth investigating.

Many of the properties had been built by two brothers – Thomas & William Hamilton – who named their terraces after American and Canadian places they had visited on a holiday tour.

Accordingly two Committee members toured the town listing all such signs and the task of raising funds to reinstate the signs, known as Project 2019,  began.

It was estimated that around £10,000 would be needed but the Society were fortunate in engaging a Master Sign Writer to undertake the task who was in fact not registered for VAT.

Generous members, local businesses and three District Councillors contributed to the fund and the work of renovating 19 signs was completed in 2020. However, three local residents refused to have their signs repainted!

One of the repainted signs, that of Gladstone Terrace, can be seen above.

Spurred on by the untidy streets of Henley being littered with food packaging, cigarette ends and other illegally disposed items, the Society proposed to Henley Town Council that they should finance a trial of two solar compactor bins,  larger in size than the existing bins and capable of holding far more rubbish than the existing bins due to the fact that they were capable of compacting the contents by solar power. In addition the bins are capable of informing base that they are in need of emptying so saving unnecessary trips for the contractors and saving on fuel costs, labour and reducing pollution in our streets. At the time it was made our proposal did not meet with the approval of all Councillors and it took some two years to get the project off the ground.

The trial eventually began in April 2023 and is on going until the end of September, when a review of the success, or otherwise, of the bins will be undertaken to see if the project should be extended.