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Brewing

One of the local products which was exported down the River Thames to London was Malt. This was made using the barley that was grown locally, and then processed in the town before being put into barges for the trip down the river to London.

With the ready supply of malt, several breweries were started in the town, as early as the mid seventeenth century. The most famous Reading Brewery was not founded until about 1785 when William Simonds founded his brewery in Broad Street. He soon found that the area was too small, and moved to Bridge Street in 1789 . There William Simonds had a house built for his family, Seven Bridges House, which was designed by Sir John Soane in 1790.
In 1960 Simonds brewery was taken over by Courage’s. The site in Bridge Street had by then grown to cover much of the land between Coley and the Town centre. In 1980 the company finished moving from its site in the centre of the town to a new site to the south of the town next to the M4.