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Reading
Once known for the triple B’s of beer, biscuits and bulbs, Reading is a large dynamic town that continues to reinvent itself to meet today’s challenges. Always important, the settlement was founded at the confluence of the River Thames and River Kennet in the eighth century and was known as ‘Readingum.’ The Anglo-Saxon meaning of the name is ‘place of Readda’s people’ or could also possibly have the Celtic origin, ‘Rhydd-Inge’ meaning ‘ford over the river.’ It is also listed in the Domesday Book of 1086. Henry I founded Reading Abbey in 1121 and built on the site of the Danish stronghold set up during the Viking wars of King Alfred’s reign. They had used the site as their invasion headquarters and King Alfred had besieged them there several times. A civil war between Henry’s daughter, Empress Matilda and her cousin, King Stephen was in full flow during the construction of the abbey and King Stephen built the bailey castle and motte. It was later destroyed by Henry II in 1153, Empress Matilda’s son, but the remains of the motte can still be seen in Forbury Gardens.
The park takes its name from the castle, ‘Fore-Borough.’ Completed in 1164, the Abbey was consecrated by Thomas A’Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury who was later canonised as a saint. The abbey was a significant pilgrimage centre in medieval England became vastly rich as many crowned heads were married and buried there, Henry I being interred there as well. The abbey was reputed to house 232 holy relics including the hand of St. James that was found 200 years later blocked up in the ruins and is now in Marlow Roman Catholic Church in Buckinghamshire along with the head of St. Phillip. However, the abbey was largely destroyed by Henry VIII in 1538. He also hung the abbot, Hugh Cook, from its main gate.
Today, the abbey’s inner gateway is one of the few remnants that is still standing. It was the original home of the Reading Ladies Boarding School, once attended by Jane Austen. Ruins from the abbey’s chapter house are also incorporated into Forbury Gardens where the world’s largest lion, sculpted by George Blackall Simonds in 1886, stands as a memorial to the Royal Berkshire Regiment killed at the Battle of Maiwand in the Afghan wars.
In spite of the ruination of its abbey, Reading was able to reinvent itself and become prosperous again with its trade in cloth and became one the largest town in Berkshire by the end of the sixteenth century. The civil war then broke out and Reading changed hands several times. Reading was the only site of major fighting in England during the Revolution of 1688 with the Battle of Reading and the taxes levied on the town were so heavy that they virtually crippled the textile industry until it died largely out.
In the eighteenth century, iron works and the breweries began to grow in Reading as turnpike roads, navigable canals and waterways assisted trade. The Great Western Railway arriving in 1841 further boosted the town’s industry. The ‘Three Bs’ of beer, which was dominated by Simond’s Brewery from 1785, bulbs from Sutton Seeds (1807-1976), and biscuits from Huntley and Palmers (1822-1977) created a booming economy. India Pale Ale was invented in Reading. There was even a ‘Reading Sauce’ that was quite similar to Worcestershire Sauce during the 1800s.
During the 1900s, Reading continued to expand and annexed Caversham in 1911. A housing boom linked Woodley, Tilehurst and Earley to Reading in the 1950s and Lower Earley in the 1970s. Although the ‘Three Bs’ have largely scaled back or moved away, Reading reinvented itself again. There is still a large brewery on the edge of Reading, near the M4 but the town centre site of the old brewery was redeveloped in 1999 as an impressive shopping centre called the Oracle, named after the seventeenth century workhouse founded by John Kendrick, the clothier. Besides providing three stories of shopping, it boosts the local economy by providing 4,000 jobs. There is also a cinema and many restaurants and bars along the chic canal. Broad Street which is anchored to the east by the Oracle and to the west by the Broad Street Mall is the town’s high street and was given over to pedestrians in 1995. There are also three smaller shopping arcades; Bristol & West, Harris and The Walk, that all comprise small specialist boutiques and shops. The mainstay of employment for the area is the IT industry and Reading boasts the likes of Microsoft, ING Direct, 3, Oracle, Sony Ericsson, Sage, Xansa, Hewlett Packard and other large companies such as Yell.Com and Thames Water.
Reading also offers much in the way of culture in the form of concert halls, fine art galleries, many museums and several festivals that have reached international acclaim counting the Reading Fringe Festival and the Reading Rock Festival in the mix.
For those who enjoy sports, the Royals are Reading’s premiership football team and they play in the local 24,500 seat Madejski stadium, built in 1998. The Guinness Premiership team, the London Irish are the local rugby football union football team and also play at the stadium. The town plays host to a number of other football variants, such as Australian rules football, Gaelic football and American football. It also has its own field hockey team and many rowing clubs. There is also greyhound racing and an annual half marathon with an average of 13,500 competitors. The town is also home to the University of Reading with its three campuses and the more recent Thames Valley University that specialises in art and design. Now the seventeenth largest populated urban area in the UK with more than 233,000 residents, Reading stands poised to succeed as it continues to reinvent itself. Quality of life and career opportunities abound as the ‘ford over the river’ has grown into so much more than its original settlers could have imagined.
