Siege of Reading

Forbury Gardens is a public park in the town of Reading in the English county of Berkshire. The park is on the site of the outer court of Reading Abbey, which was in front of the Abbey Church. The site was formerly known as the Forbury, and one of the roads flanking the current gardens is still known as The Forbury. Fairs were held on the site three times a year until the 19th century. The gardens are listed as Grade II in the English Heritage Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.Forbury, a suburb of the New Zealand city of Dunedin, was named after the gardens by early resident William Henry Valpy, who was born in Reading.

Reading Abbey Girls' School, also known as Reading Ladies’ Boarding School, was an educational establishment in Reading, Berkshire open from at least 1755 until 1794. Many of its pupils went on to make a mark on English culture and society, particularly as writers. Most famous is Jane Austen, who used the school as a model of "a real, honest, old-fashioned Boarding-school".

The Abbey Gateway was originally the inner gateway of Reading Abbey, which today is a large, mostly ruined abbey in the center of the town of Reading, in the English county of Berkshire. The gateway adjoins Reading Crown Court and Forbury Gardens and is one of only two abbey buildings that have survived intact, the other being the Hospitium of St John the Baptist. It is a grade I listed building, and includes a porters lodge on the ground floor and a large open room above the gate.The gateway marked the division between the area of the abbey open to the public and the section accessible only to monks, with the abbot's lodging just inside the gateway. The gateway thus became the meeting place between the abbot, who commanded considerable powers within the town, and the people of the town. In 1539, after the dissolution, Hugh Faringdon, the last abbot of Reading was hanged, drawn, and quartered outside the abbey gateway. Whilst the other buildings of the abbey were stripped for lead and stone, the abbot's lodging was turned into a royal palace on the orders of Edward Seymour, who was acting as lord protector as King Edward VI was still a child. The abbey gateway was also retained, as the entrance to the royal residence.Edward's sister, Queen Elizabeth I, was a regular visitor to the royal palace, but during the Civil War the old abbot’s lodgings were damaged, and were not used as a royal palace again. Eventually the palace was demolished and new houses were built alongside the gateway. In the late 18th century one of them was home to the Reading Ladies’ Boarding School, attended amongst others by the novelist Jane Austen. The school used the room above the gateway as a classroom.The gateway was heavily restored by Sir George Gilbert Scott, after a partial collapse during a storm in 1861. In 1900 a series of twelve heads, sculpted by Andrew Ohlson, were added to the gateway.In 2010, the gateway was closed and fencing erected when some of the decorative stonework came loose and fell into the street. It reopened in 2018 after an extensive restoration, which was supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The room above the gateway is now used by Reading Museum as part of its learning programme for local schools, whilst the arch below is available for use by pedestrian and cycle traffic. The Reading Half Marathon, held every year in March or April, passes under the gateway at around the 7 miles (11 km) stage.

The Maiwand Lion is a sculpture and war memorial in the Forbury Gardens, a public park in the town of Reading, in the English county of Berkshire. The statue was named after the Battle of Maiwand and was unveiled in December 1886 to commemorate the deaths of 329 men from the 66th (Berkshire) Regiment of Foot during the campaign in the Second Anglo-Afghan War in Afghanistan between 1878 and 1880. It is sometimes known locally as the Forbury Lion. The inscription on the plinth reads as follows: This monument records the names and commemorates the valour and devotion of XI [11] officers and CCCXVIII [318] non-commissioned officers and men of the LXVI [66th] Berkshire Regiment who gave their lives for their country at Girishk Maiwand and Kandahar and during the Afghan Campaign MDCCCLXXIX [1879] – MDCCCLXXX [1880]."History does not afford any grander or finer instance of gallantry and devotion to Queen and country than that displayed by the LXVI Regiment at the Battle of Maiwand on the XXVII [27th] July MDCCCLXXX [1880]."Despatch of General Primrose. The regiment lost approximately 258 men out of 500 (reports of the number vary, see the statue inscription total above) at the battle of Maiwand, having faced an Afghan army ten times larger than the British contingent. Eleven of the men, protecting the colours, made such a brave stand before their deaths that the Afghans who fought them reported it with great respect. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle based his character Doctor Watson on the regiment's Medical officer, Surgeon Major A F Preston, who was injured in battle.The sculptor was George Blackall Simonds, a member of the Reading H & G Simonds brewing family. The sculpture took two years to design and complete, and the lion is one of the world's largest cast iron statues. Rumours persist that Simonds committed suicide on learning that the lion's gait was incorrectly that of a domestic cat. In fact, he made careful observations on lions at London Zoo and the stance was anatomically correct. He also lived for another 43 years, enjoying continuing success as a sculptor and later creating a statue of Queen Victoria (1887) and a statue of George Palmer (1891). He retired from sculpting in 1903 and worked in the family business, eventually becoming its chairman in 1910. In 1922 he temporarily came out of retirement to build the Bradfield war memorial, commemorating the deaths in the First World War of those in the 2nd Battalion, South Wales Borderers, which included his son.The Maiwand Lion featured on the front page of one of the local newspapers, the Reading Post, prior to the publication's closure in 2014; it also appears on the Reading Football Club crest. Its face featured on the medal given to the 15,000 finishers at the Reading Half Marathon race in 2016. The statue is made of cast iron and weighs 16 tons. It was cast by H. Young & Co. of Pimlico in 1886 and was originally supported on a terracotta pedestal. This was replaced with Portland stone in 1910 when the terracotta showed signs of cracking under the statue's weight. The rectangular pilastered plinth carries tablets recording the names of the dead, together with inscription above. The whole monument is listed grade II by English Heritage.The Loddon Brewery, located in Dunsden Green close to Reading, brew an IPA called Forbury Lion.

Reading Crown Court is a judicial facility in Reading, Berkshire. It is a Grade II listed building.

St James's Church is a Roman Catholic church situated in the centre of the town of Reading in the English county of Berkshire. The church is located next to Reading Abbey ruins, between the Forbury Gardens and Reading Gaol. St James's Church continues the traditions of Reading Abbey in the post-Reformation era. Its founder was James Wheble, who owned land in the area at that time. The church was designed by the architect A. W. N. Pugin and is one of his first church designs. Parts of the church were built using stones from the Abbey ruins.The design of the church is Norman, a style not normally associated with Pugin, and was probably influenced by the proximity of the Abbey ruins. The exterior of the building is of flint, with ashlar dressings and a Roman tile roof. Construction started in 1837 and the church opened on 5 August 1840. In 1925, the south aisle and the ambulatory round the apse were added. In 1962, the church was further extended by a north aisle into which was relocated the baptistery. The church is a Grade II listed building.St James's Church, along with St William of York's Church, forms a joint parish within the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth. The current parish priest (since February 2010) is Canon John O'Shea. Sunday masses are well-attended often with standing room only; the parish boasts a large number of nationalities among its regular congregation. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Archbishop of Westminster from 2000 to 2009, was baptised in St James's and served at the altar there regularly as a boy.

The Roseate Reading Hotel (formerly the Forbury Hotel) is a boutique hotel in Reading, Berkshire, England. It is situated in the Forbury, formerly a part of Reading Abbey, and on the southern side of the modern Forbury Gardens. The building that forms the front section of the hotel was the Shire Hall for the County of Berkshire, built in 1911 and used as such until 1981, and is a grade II listed building.

The Blade, also known as Abbey Mill House, is a high-rise and the tallest building in Reading, Berkshire, England. Used for office space, it is 86 metres (282 ft) tall and is visible from many places in the town. The first tenant to occupy the building was Kaplan Financial, who moved to the building from the original Thames Tower.

Anne Beauchamp, 15th Countess of Warwick (14 February 1444 – 3 June 1449), was the only child and heiress of the English nobleman Henry Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick. She died a child aged 5, after which the earldom of Warwick was inherited by her paternal aunt. The title then passed by marriage to Anne's maternal uncle, Richard Neville, the famous 'Kingmaker' of the later Wars of the Roses.

Reading Abbey is a large, ruined abbey in the centre of the town of Reading, in the English county of Berkshire. It was founded by Henry I in 1121 "for the salvation of my soul, and the souls of King William, my father, and of King William, my brother, and Queen Maud, my wife, and all my ancestors and successors." In its heyday the abbey was one of Europe's largest royal monasteries. The traditions of the Abbey are continued today by the neighbouring St James's Church, which is partly built using stones of the Abbey ruins.Reading Abbey was the focus of a major £3 million project called "Reading Abbey Revealed" which conserved the ruins and Abbey Gateway and resulted in them being re-opened to the public on 16 June 2018. Alongside the conservation, new interpretation of the Reading Abbey Quarter was installed, including a new gallery at Reading Museum, and an extensive activity programme.Abbey Ward of Reading Borough Council takes its name from Reading Abbey, which lies within its boundaries. Now HM Prison Reading is on the site.

Abbey Mill, or Abbey Mills, is a ruined former watermill on the Holy Brook, a channel of the River Kennet in the English county of Berkshire. The ruins are grade II listed.The mill originally belonged to Reading Abbey, whose monks are believed to have created the Holy Brook as a water supply to this and other mills owned by them. It is situated just to the south of the ruins of the Abbey itself, in the centre of the town of Reading.The mill was built straddling the Holy Brook which marked the southern boundary of the monastic enclosure. It continued to grind corn into the 1950s. Today, all that remains is a section of wall, pierced by three arches. The wall is built of flint with caen stone ashlar dressings and brick filling. The two side arches are round headed, whilst the centre arch over the Holy Brook is larger and pointed.

The Holy Brook is a channel of the River Kennet that flows through the English town of Reading. While of considerable historical significance, the origin and nature of the brook is still unclear. It is probable that some parts of the channel are natural, while other parts were created in medieval times by the monks of Reading Abbey to supply water mills and fish ponds. John Speed's map of Reading (c.1610) shows the brook flowing in the open air throughout, but a map from 1835 shows the town centre section to have been largely culverted by then, as is the case now.The Holy Brook leaves the main channel of the Kennet at a brick structure known as the Arrowhead near the village of Theale, and flows to the north of the main channel until rejoining it just downstream of the centre of Reading. The channel is some 6 miles (9.7 km) in length, of which approximately 600 metres (2,000 ft) are culverted.