17 Market Place

16 Forbury Gardens

Forbury Gardens is named after the Abbey Forbury, the outer court of the Abbey. After the dissolution of the monastery the town kept the area for the holding of fairs. Over time the fairs grew less important, and by the early nineteenth century it had become a rubbish tip. Improvements started in 1831 and the Council bought the gardens in 1855. The most well known feature of the gardens is the Maiwand Lion, which was added in 1886. It commemorates the death of officers and men of the Royal Berkshire Regiment in the Afghan Wars of 1879 to 1880.

The mound in the park may be the one remaining feature of the Civil War defences of the town. During the siege of Reading an earth ditch was dug by the unwilling inhabitants to defend the royalist garrison. Despite the large garrison, the townspeople managed to construct some guns under the noses of the royalist troops, only to find out that they destroyed themselves when fired. The Earl of Essex's army tried to take the town in April 1643. A decisive battle was only avoided by the injury of the commanding officer and the agreement of his second in command to surrender the town. The defenders were allowed to march out of town. The destruction they left behind, with no bridges left standing, left the town much poorer.

Between the Forbury and Market Place, in one of the gardens of the former Abbey, was the Royal Seed Establishment. Martin Hope Sutton became a partner in the firm in 1840 and the firm gained a reputation for honest dealing and quality seeds. As well as the gardens in the centre of town, they had more large grounds on the outskirts of the town. Suttons moved out of the town in 1974,