Holme Park

Reading Blue Coat School is a co-educational public day school in Holme Park, Sonning, Berkshire. It is situated beside the River Thames, and was established in 1646 by Richard Aldworth, who named it "Aldworth's Hospital". Aldworth founded a near-identical school in Basingstoke in the same year.

Sonning Regatta is the regatta of the village of Sonning in Berkshire and the hamlet of Sonning Eye in Oxfordshire, England, on the north and south banks of the River Thames. It is a part of the Sonning Festival.

Sonning Lock is a lock and associated weir situated on the River Thames at the village of Sonning near Reading, Berkshire, England. The first lock was built by the Thames Navigation Commission in 1773 and it has been rebuilt three times since then. There is a weir a little upstream at the top of the island where Sonning Backwater separates from the main course of the river.

Sonning Lane is a cricket and hockey ground in Sonning near Reading, Berkshire, England. It is located on a road called Sonning Lane between the A4 road and the village of Sonning, hence the name. Sonny Lane is the home of Reading Cricket Club. In 1988 Berkshire played Cornwall in the grounds' first Minor Counties Championship match, and the county side has continued to play there regularly since. This has also brought List-A cricket to the ground, starting with Berkshire's participation in the 1991 NatWest Trophy. There have been no further List-A games since 2005. The ground is also the home of Reading Hockey Club who enter teams in both the Men's and Women's England Hockey Leagues. The ground has also hosted several men's and women's international matches.

Sonning Cutting is on the original Great Western Railway built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. It is to the east of Reading station and to the west of Twyford station near the village of Sonning in Berkshire, England. The railway's originally planned route had been around the north of Sonning Hill past the village. But because of local objections the railway bypassed the village in a cutting, over 1-mile (1.6 km) and up to 60 feet (18 m) deep, through the hill, giving a more direct route between Twyford and Reading.The cutting was hand-dug with no machinery and the spoil removed in wheelbarrows and horse-drawn carts. It took two years to complete and several people were killed in the process. The line was opened on 30 March 1840. After the ending of the broad gauge in 1892 the railway was widened to four tracks. This involved a major rebuilding of the cutting, during which the slope of the sides was reduced.

Ali's Pond is a 0.4-hectare (0.99-acre) Local Nature Reserve in Sonning in Berkshire. It is owned by Sonning Parish Council and managed by the Friends of Ali's Pond.The nature reserve adjoins King George's Field in Sonning. It was established in 1997 by professional ecologist and local resident Alastair Driver (hence the site's name), who acts as the voluntary warden. The area is laid out with paths and large ponds.Following the discovery of breeding Great Crested Newts during the Millennium Festival pond-dipping sessions in the summer of 2000, an application was made to English Nature for local nature reserve status for the site. The first site management plan was produced in September 2000 and the site was officially declared Ali's Pond LNR in April 2001, making Sonning Parish Council only the third parish council in the country to declare an LNR. The nature area has been created and managed for the use and enjoyment of all sections of the local community, as well as for visitors to the village. Key England Biodiversity Strategy priority species which have colonized the site so far include Great-crested Newt, Stag Beetle, Song Thrush and Pipistrelle Bat. In total, 19 species of dragonfly, 23 species of butterfly, over 300 species of larger moth and 45 species of aquatic/wetland plants have been recorded at the site since its establishment in 1997. The field immediately to the south and west of Ali's Pond LNR was purchased by Reading Blue Coat School in 2006. Then, in 2007, as a condition of the planning application to change the land use designation of that field from agriculture to sport, another nature area was created within it to provide additional habitat for Great Crested Newts. This area is known as Sonning Field and contains another amphibian breeding pond, log and brushwood piles and new hedgerows with a wide variety of native trees and shrubs. Both fields are rich in wildflowers having had their nutrient levels reduced for many years through annual hay cutting and removal of arisings, supplemented with the sowing of native loamy and sandy soil wildflower mixes in 2020. A permissive path enables easy access through from Ali's Pond and across Sonning Field through to Sonning Lane. In addition to the wholly informal use of the site, a Friends of Ali's Pond (FAP) Group has been set up which now has over 70 members, most of whom live within a couple of miles of the site. Members of this group participate in volunteer management activities such as tree planting, pond clearance and hay-making and attend moth and amphibian surveys under the guidance of the voluntary warden Alastair Driver. These activities have not been confined solely to the reserve — conservation work has also been carried out in other nearby locations to provide complementary habitat and amenity to that found in the reserve. The Friends of Ali's Pond received the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management 2016 Best Practice Award for Practical Nature Conservation - Small Scale.

Sonning Bishop's Palace was a former episcopal palace at Sonning, east of Reading, in Berkshire, England.The palace was in Holme Park near the River Thames. It was a residence of the Bishops of Salisbury. In 1135, while staying at the palace, Bishop Roger of Salisbury attended the funeral of King Henry I at Reading Abbey. In September 1216, King John stayed for six days at the palace. In 1337, defences were added by Bishop Robert Wyville of Salisbury. After the abdication of King Richard II and his cousin King Henry IV's coronation in October 1399, Richard II's then 9-year-old wife, Isabella, was kept under house arrest at the palace. The Bishops of Salisbury continued in residence, some more often than others, until they sold it to Queen Elizabeth I. She visited the palace twice, but later it fell into disrepair. The site of the palace was excavated in 1912–14 and evidence of a hall, chapel and other rooms was found. The remains dated from the 13th century with alterations in the 14th and 15th centuries. The buildings were surrounded by a moat on three sides. Today nothing can be seen of the palace from the surface apart from some unevenness in the ground. It is in a grass field used for cows between St Andrew's Church and Sonning Lock.

St Andrew's Church is Church of England parish church in a central position in the village of Sonning, close to the River Thames, in the English county of Berkshire. It is notable for its fine array of church monuments and for being the successor of an Anglo-Saxon Cathedral.

The Bull Inn, also known as The Bull at Sonning or just The Bull, is an historic public house — now also a restaurant and hotel — in the centre of the village of Sonning in Berkshire, England.

Sonning is a village and civil parish in Berkshire, England, on the River Thames, east of Reading. The village was described by Jerome K. Jerome in his book Three Men in a Boat as "the most fairy-like little nook on the whole river".

The Mill at Sonning is a theatre and restaurant (or dinner theater), converted from a circa-1800 flour mill on earlier foundations, on an island in the River Thames at Sonning Eye in the English county of Berkshire.The river divides into three, with the mill race forming the middle branch, spanned by one of the Sonning Backwater Bridges just downstream of the mill. The original mill was established much earlier and was mentioned in the Domesday Book. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the mill was owned by the well-known local families of May and Witherington, and it produced flour for Huntley and Palmer biscuits in the nearby town of Reading. More recently, the Mill complex has been converted into a 215-seat air-conditioned theatre, with a restaurant for pre-theatre meals and also a bar, where the original watermill is now exposed to view. Close by is the French Horn hotel, also on the river. The theatre has a small hydroelectric generator of 18.5 kW capacity, commissioned in June 2005. This was the first such installation on the Thames, predating the one at Windsor Castle. In 1984, the Mill at Sonning was given a conservation award by The Times newspaper and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors for the design, restoration and conversion of the derelict mill into a dinner theatre.The theatre's first artistic director was Peter Egan. Productions have included performances by Anthony Valentine, Judi Dench, June Whitfield, Adam Faith, Michael Denison, Dulcie Gray, John Junkin and Brian Cant. The Mill adjoins the Mill House, a circa-1800 house based on earlier foundations, acquired by the American film actor George Clooney and his wife, British human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, in 2014.

Sonning Eye is a hamlet on the River Thames in the Sonning Common ward of South Oxfordshire, England, in the civil parish of Eye & Dunsden (one of its four small settlements), at what is since 1974 the southernmost tip of Oxfordshire.