Reading Southern railway station

Reading Museum (run by the Reading Museum Service) is a museum of the history of the town of Reading, in the English county of Berkshire, and the surrounding area. It is accommodated within Reading Town Hall, and contains galleries describing the history of Reading and its related industries, a gallery of artefacts discovered during the excavations of Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester Roman Town), a copy of the Bayeux Tapestry, finds relating to Reading Abbey and an art collection.

Reading Town Hall is the town hall of Reading, Berkshire, England. The town hall was built in several phases between 1786 and 1897, although the principal facade was designed by Alfred Waterhouse in 1875. Situated close to the site of Reading Abbey, it is adjoined to the north by the Hospitium of St John and to the south by St Laurence's Church.No longer the home of the town's administration, the Town Hall now houses the Reading Museum, a large concert hall, several smaller halls and conference rooms, a marriage Ceremony Room, and a public cafe. It is a listed building, with the block designed by Alfred Waterhouse being listed grade II*, whilst other parts of the building are listed grade II.

The Hospitium of St John the Baptist was the hospitium, or dormitory for pilgrims, of Reading Abbey, which today is a large, ruined abbey in the centre of the town of Reading, in the English county of Berkshire. The hospitium was founded in 1189, and at its maximum comprised a range of buildings that could accommodate 400 people. The main building has survived, and is grade II listed. Much of the remainder of the original hospitium was located where Reading Town Hall now stands.The abbey school, which was founded in 1125, moved into the hospitium in 1485 as the Royal Grammar School of King Henry VII. The surviving building probably dates from this date, albeit incorporating some of the earlier building. The abbey school still exists in the form of Reading School, a state grammar school, albeit in different buildings on a different site.About 100 years after the abbey school occupied the hospitium, and after the dissolution of the monasteries, Reading town council created a new town hall by inserting an upper floor into the hospitium's refectory, leaving the lower floor to be used by the school. This was the home of the town's administration for about 200 years, but the old refectory building eventually became structurally unsound. Between 1785 and 1786, the refectory building was dismantled and replaced on the same site by the first of several phases of building that were to make up today's Town Hall. The main building of the hospitium survived this demolition, and various other uses followed.In 1892 the College at Reading was founded in the hospitium building as an extension college of the University of Oxford. The college occupied the hospitium until it was given a site on London Road in 1904 by the Palmer family of Huntley & Palmers fame. In 1926 the college received a Royal Charter and became the University of Reading. More recently the hospitium has been incorporated into an office development, and is occupied by a children's nursery.Today the surviving building occupies a rather isolated site, with no direct street access. It abuts the main concert hall of Reading Town Hall to the west, and the south of the building opens directly onto the churchyard of St Laurence's Church. The building is surrounded to the north and east by a modern office development, with a small intermediate courtyard.

The statue of Queen Victoria stands at the western end of Friar Street outside the Town Hall of Reading, Berkshire, in southern England.

St Laurence's Church is a Church of England mission and former parish church in the town of Reading in the English county of Berkshire. It is situated alongside the site of Reading Abbey, formerly bounded by the main Compter Gate to the south and the Hospitium of St John to the north. What was once the private chapel of the latter institution still remains in the north aisle. The church is a Grade I listed building.

Reading Central is a constituency in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament. It was formed as a result of the 2023 Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies. It subsumes parts of the former Reading West and Reading East constituencies but, unlike them, the whole of the new constituency will be within the Borough of Reading. It will be first contested in the 2024 general election.

The Malmaison Hotel Reading (formerly the Great Western Hotel) is a grade II listed hotel in the town of Reading in the English county of Berkshire. It is situated at the junction of Blagrave Street and Station Road, directly opposite the main entrance to Reading railway station. It was opened in 1844, shortly after the Great Western Railway opened its line from London, and is thought to be the oldest surviving purpose-built railway hotel in the world.

The Three Guineas is a Grade II listed public house located at Reading railway station, in Reading, England. It occupies a building originally built in, or before, 1867. Until 1989, the building formed the main entrance and booking hall of the station, and consequently is listed as the Main Building Of Reading General Station. The pub is owned and operated by Fuller, Smith & Turner, trading under the Fuller's brand. It has two main floors, plus a basement and a centrally located clock tower. There are bars on both the ground floor and in the basement, together with a large outdoor seating area that forms part of Station Square.

Reading railway station is a major transport hub in Reading, Berkshire, England. It is on the northern edge of the town centre, near the main retail and commercial areas and the River Thames, 36 miles (58 km) from London Paddington. Reading is the ninth-busiest station in the UK outside London, and the second busiest interchange station outside London, with over 3.8 million passengers changing trains at the station annually.The station is managed by Network Rail and is served by four train operating companies: Great Western Railway, CrossCountry, South Western Railway and the Elizabeth line.

Abbey is an electoral ward of the Borough of Reading, in the English county of Berkshire. The ruins of Reading Abbey lie within the boundaries of the ward, a fact from which it derives its name. The ward covers the centre of the town, south of the River Thames, and is bordered by Battle, Thames, Redlands, Katesgrove and Coley wards. Although including significant portions of both the suburbs of West Reading and East Reading, the ward lies almost entirely within the Reading East parliamentary constituency, with only a few streets to the west of George Street in the Reading West parliamentary constituency.As of 2016, there were some 13,500 people living in Abbey ward, of whom 16.1% were aged under 16, 6% were aged 65 and over, and 44% were born outside the UK. The population lives in a total of just under 6,800 dwellings, of which 57% are in purpose-built blocks of flats, just over 20% each are terraced houses, and just over 10% are flat conversions or shared houses, with detached and semi-detached houses making up the rest. Of the population aged between 16 and 74, 72.4% are in employment and 5.1% are unemployed. Of those in employment, 60% are in managerial, professional or technical occupations, with 34% in professional occupations.As with all Reading wards, the ward elects three councillors to Reading Borough Council. Elections since 2004 are held by thirds, with elections in three years out of four. These councillors are currently: Tony Page (2016; Labour), Karen Rowland (2018; Labour) and Mohammed Ayub (2019; Labour).

The Corn Exchange is a former commercial building in Reading, Berkshire, England. The structure, which was commissioned as a corn exchange and the frontage of which is now used as an entrance to a modern shopping complex, is a Grade II listed building.

The Simeon Monument, also known as the Soane Obelisk, the Soane Monument and the Simeon Obelisk, is a stone structure in Market Place, the former site of the market in Reading, Berkshire. It was commissioned by Edward Simeon, a Reading-born merchant who became extremely wealthy as a City of London trader. Edward Simeon's brother, John, was a former Member of Parliament for Reading who had lost his seat in the 1802 elections to the parliament of the newly created United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, since which time the family had been engaged in ostentatious spending locally in an effort to gain support among the town's voters. Although street lighting had been installed in Reading in 1797, the system used was one of lamps attached to the sides of buildings and as a consequence open spaces remained unlit. In 1804 Simeon persuaded the Mayor of Reading that it would be of benefit to erect a structure in Market Place, which would serve both to carry lamps to light the area and to improve the flow of traffic in the area, and volunteered to pay for such a structure himself. Simeon commissioned local architect John Soane to design a suitable structure. Soane designed an unusual triangular structure, 25 feet (7.6 m) high and built of Portland stone. It had no official unveiling or opening ceremony, but the stonework was complete by September 1804. The structure was immediately controversial, denounced within weeks of its opening as "a paltry gew-gaw thing without use, or name", built by Simeon to promote himself rather than for the public benefit. In early 1805 Simeon donated an annuity of 3% interest on £1000 to pay for the lamps on the obelisk to be lit in perpetuity. By 1900 a cabmen's shelter had been erected next to the monument, and in 1933 underground public toilets had been built alongside it. Although Simeon had stipulated that the lamps were to remain lighted forever, by this time the lamps were no longer operational, having been replaced by baskets of flowers in 1911. Although the monument was Grade II listed in 1956, by this time it was becoming extremely dilapidated. The market was relocated away from Market Place in the 1970s, and the obelisk avoided demolition primarily owing to lobbying by admirers of Soane, as it was the last surviving structure in Reading to have been designed by him. In 2005, Reading Borough Council agreed to landscape Market Place and to renovate the Simeon Monument. The now-disused toilets and other structures around the monument were removed, and the monument itself was restored to its former condition.