11 High Bridge

10 Chain Street

Surrounded by good sheep country, and with a good link to London by boats going down the River's Kennet and Thames, it was natural that Reading became a centre of the cloth industry. The first reports of a mill being used for fulling (where the wool was cleaned) were in 1220. Mills soon spread alongside the Kennet, using the water to wash or dye wool, and causing pollution! Broad Street on market days was lined with sheep pens as farmers brought their sheep to market. By the fifteenth century, cloth making was the main industry of the town. The Merchants Guild was granted powers by a charter in 1487. They had the power to inspect all cloth leaving the town.

By the start of the seventeenth century the cloth trade was beginning to suffer competition from other parts of the country. When John Kendrick died in 1624, he left money in his will for setting up a cloth workhouse to enable the poor to work. The site chosen was off Gun Street and by 1628 the Oracle had been built. Oracle means " a person of great wisdom" and a response to an appeal to a God. No-one knows why the workshop was named the Oracle. Unfortunately, the intention of John Kendrick that the Oracle should be used for the good of the poor did not happen. Other Clothiers used it to get more money for themselves. Eventually the Oracle fell into ruin and the money left to run the workshop was reclaimed by Christ Hospital in 1849, who also benefited from John Kendrick's will. Kendrick School is now the only reminder of John Kendrick's charity.