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Offices

In the 1970’s Reading began to be attractive as a place where companies could have their offices. This was partly because of the cost of offices in London and due to the fact that Reading was near to London and had good transport links. A large part of the east of the town along King’s Road was planned for office buildings.

Offices were also built near the town centre. These include Reading Bridge House, the first office block in Reading, built in 1963, Nugent House which was built for the Thames Conservancy and taken over as the headquarters of Thames Water, built in 1972 and demolished in 1988. Western Tower, next to the station was used for the Western Region of British Railways, and next to this was built the brown tower of Foster Wheeler. East along the Forbury Road was built Queens House, first used by Metal Box, which was made of concrete in an octagonal design. On the other side of Forbury Gardens, on the site of Suttons Seeds were built offices for the Prudential, with a space left underneath for the IDR to go through. This plan was not carried out, and the site was cleared in 1997, with the Prudential moving to new offices on the site of Huntley and Palmers Offices. Next to this, next to the Abbey remains was built Abbots House.

Outside the town centre, and in some cases across the borough boundary, other offices were built on green fields sites, such as Green Park near the M4, or on brown field sites such as the Earley Power Station site. These new offices attracted many companies in the computer industry, such as Microsoft, Digital and Oracle.