15 Reading Abbey

14 Blakes Lock Museum

Blakes Lock Museum has many displays which helps show what Reading was like in the past and is well worth a visit. Around the museum there are several large shops and factories. All these have been built on land that was once Huntley and Palmers Works.

Further downstream there are several large gas holders. Once gas was made on this site from coal. Gas used to be made from Coal and so Gas Works were normally built near a transport link, either a canal or a railway so that coal could easily be brought to the site. Since each town had its own gas works, supplying buildings and also lighting the streets. After gas was found in the North Sea the factory that made the gas was knocked down and the enormous gasometers that hold the gas were reduced in number.

Running behind the gas works and the modern warehouses and shops that stand on the site of Huntley Palmers is the railway. The Great Western Railway followed both the road and canal links across the country from London to Bristol, passing through Reading on its way. The railway was approved by Parliament in 1835 and reached Reading by 1840. It was built to a very high standard, with less curves and gentler hills than other railways. The distance between the tracks was greater than with other railways as the railway engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, thought that this was safer and would allow trains to travel more quickly. This meant that trains from other railways could not travel on the Great Western tracks, and so the broad gauge was abandoned in 1892.

The coming of the railway soon proved to be both quick and cheap means of transport. People and goods which had previously been carried on the canals or the horse drawn coaches soon changed over to the railway, with a few exceptions. Within a year of the railway being opened the coaches had almost disappeared, and the railway bought the canal in 1852 and gradually allowed it to fall into disuse.

From Blakes Lock there is also a good view of Reading Prison. Built in 1844 it used to look like a castle, with towers at each corner of the wall. These have now gone, but inside the walls can still be seen the battlements and turrets of the Victorian prison. Reading Prisons most famous prisoner was probably Oscar Wilde, who wrote stories such as "The Selfish Giant" and also wrote a poem called "The Ballad of Reading Gaol".