Branch History

The Reading branch of Samaritans was started on July 15th 1962. Chad Varah, who founded Samaritans in 1953, had decided that branches should be established in more of the major cities in the country, and visited Reading to speak about the work of Samaritans.

As a result, the first volunteers were recruited and our first centre opened up in the basement of St Giles Parish Hall. Premises were a little cramped – if more than one visitor came, the second one would be seen in the boiler room among the piles of coal (at least it was warm in there!)

The area we covered at that time was extensive – reaching to Basingstoke, Newbury, Slough and High Wycombe. In these areas local befriending groups were set up, and evolved into the distinct branches that operate there today.

After several years in the basement of St Giles Hall it became apparent that the centre was too small and inconvenient. So in 1969 we moved to some rooms attached to the Trinity United Reform Church in Sidmouth Street, which featured two furnished rooms for visitors (no more coal dust) as well as a Parlour used for training and meetings.

In 1980 we moved again: the building had become decrepit and was due to be pulled down, so with enormous hard work from the Friends of Samaritans in raising the money, we bought our first premises at 154 Southampton Street. This was a very different proposition, an end of terrace house with four floors from basement (used for training) up to the “director’s office” in the attic – wonderful views but something of a fire hazard!

Southampton Street served us well but in the end we had to move: it was in need of extensive (and therefore expensive) repairs, and also it really had no opportunity for accommodating disabled volunteers or callers. Again the Friends raised the cash, and after much hunting we finally settled in our current premises at 59a Cholmeley Road, in the Newtown area of East Reading, in July 1993.

This had been a builder’s yard, and the office building needed only minor alterations to be suitable – with disabled access for callers, car parking and a conference room in addition to the Operations Room. There are also dedicated bedrooms for the use of volunteers who want to sleep during the parts of the night when they are not on shift. A separate training building, known as “Friends House”, was added some years later, thus improving our ability to accommodate disabled volunteers.

Over the years much has changed, and much has stayed the same. In the early days a “flying squad” would be despatched to people who asked for help (and occasionally to people who hadn’t): we don’t do this anymore! More recently, email has become a significant route for support – with the interesting twist that email knows no boundaries, so some of our calls come from abroad, particularly the USA. The newest form of support is by SMS (text) message – Reading was one of the original branches piloting this scheme, which is now being rolled out to many more branches.

Meanwhile the telephone has remained as our main and best known route of contact – although even here the rise of the mobile phone has changed the way that people call us, and the introduction of a single national number for all Samaritans branches has expanded the places that we are called from.

And our principles, although rephrased and rewritten from time to time (see our values for the current rendering), have remained essentially unchanged throughout. We offer a confidential, non-judgemental place for people to explore their feelings, often the only place where people feel they can safely explore thoughts of suicide and despair without losing their right to make their own decisions. Long may this continue!