Reading Central Library

High Bridge, sometimes known as Duke Street Bridge, is a bridge across the River Kennet in the town centre of Reading in the English county of Berkshire. It links Duke Street, to its north, and London Street, to its south. High Bridge is the oldest surviving bridge across the Kennet, and is a grade II listed building. It comprises a single arch of vermiculated Portland stone, with a plain keystone of ashlar.The bridge forms the downstream limit of the Brewery Gut, a particularly narrow stretch of the river, and, situated as it is on a blind bend on the river, itself provides a challenge for navigation. For this reason, navigation under the bridge and through the Brewery Gut is controlled by a set of traffic lights on a one-way basis.

Jacksons Corner is a thoroughfare in the English town of Reading, Berkshire. It is a prominent landmark site and is on the corner of Market Place and Kings Road.

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 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.

Reading Crown Court is a judicial facility in Reading, Berkshire. It 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.

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.

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.

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 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 George Hotel is a hotel and former coaching inn in the town of Reading in the English county of Berkshire. It is situated in the eastern end of the town centre, on the corner of King Street and Minster Street, next to The Oracle shopping mall. It is a Grade II listed building.

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.