The last of the Wokingham Heelases
Local people will know about the Heelases who owned department stores in Wokingham and Reading. Perhaps less well known is Frank Charles Heelas, fourth son of Tyndale Heelas, the manager of the Wokingham branch. Frank was born in 1874 and did not enter the family business.
His earliest known employment was as a farm bailiff and for a while he lived and worked at the Manor House in Isley Walton, Leicestershire. In 1904, after his return, he bought for £2,350 the flour mill in Reading Road, near what is now the Woosehill Roundabout. The mill had been in the hands of the Wescott family and had replaced an earlier paper mill that burned down in 1884.Thomas Manley Wescott had been the first Mayor of Wokingham and Frank married his niece Charlotte in 1916.
To make the mill more efficient Frank altered the course of the Emm Brook and provided a deeper mill run to increase the efficiency of the mill wheel that powered the machinery
In 1921 Frank sold the mill to C B Middleton & Co. which turned it into a knitting factory, the machines and a large winder being operated by water turbine.
After the sale Fank and Charlotte, who had no children, continued to live in the adjacent Mill House, which, during their time there, was well-known for the quality of its gardens.
By the Second World War part of the mill itself was taken over by Metalair, manufacturers of aircraft components who later diversified into making electric clocks, children’s tricycles and even a rotary mower called Ladybird. The other part was occupied by a garage. Later the building was occupied by Clifford Dairies but the whole site was demolished in the 1970s to make way for the Woosehill Roundabout, with car show rooms built where the mill once was. It is still possible to see evidence of the old mill on the Woosehill side of the roundabout.
Frank and Charlotte were very generous with their time and money, distributing gifts in support of people and enterprises in and around Emmbrook, and in particular giving funds to Emmbrook Mission Room and to St Pauls Church.
Charlotte died in February 1961 and Frank moved soon afterwards to Fernleigh on the Terrace in Wokingham, previously the home of William ‘Billie’ Martin, former Mayor who had generously made the pool he had built nearby available to the public.
Frank died in September 1964, aged 92, the last member of the Heelases to live in Wokingham, thus bringing to an end a family association with the town that began in 1796 when his great-grandfather William opened a draper’s ship in the Market Place.