Bridge Street, Reading

The Oracle is a large indoor shopping and leisure mall on the banks of the River Kennet in Reading, Berkshire, England. Partly on the site of a 17th-century workhouse of the same name, it was developed and is owned by a joint venture of Hammerson and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

The following is a timeline of the history of Reading, the county town of Berkshire in England.

Reading ( (listen) RED-ing) is a town and borough in Berkshire, England. Located in the Thames Valley at the confluence of the rivers Thames and Kennet. Reading is 40 miles (64 km) east of Swindon, 24 miles (39 km) south of Oxford, 40 miles (64 km) west of London and 16 miles (26 km) north of Basingstoke. Reading is a major commercial centre, especially for information technology and insurance. It is also a regional retail centre, serving a large area of the Thames Valley with its shopping centres, including the Oracle, the Broad Street Mall, and the pedestrianised area around Broad Street. It is home to the University of Reading. Every year it hosts the Reading Festival, one of England's biggest music festivals. Reading has a professional association football team, Reading F.C., and participates in many other sports. Reading dates from the 8th century. It was an important trading and ecclesiastical centre in the Middle Ages, the site of Reading Abbey, one of the largest and richest monasteries of medieval England with strong royal connections, of which the 12th-century abbey gateway and significant ancient ruins remain. By 1525, Reading was the largest town in Berkshire, and tenth in England for taxable wealth. The town was seriously affected by the English Civil War, with a major siege and loss of trade, but played a pivotal role in the Glorious Revolution, whose only significant military action was fought on its streets. The 18th century saw the beginning of a major ironworks in the town and the growth of the brewing trade for which Reading was to become famous. The 19th century saw the coming of the Great Western Railway and the development of the town's brewing, baking and seed growing businesses, and the town grew rapidly as a manufacturing centre. Reading is also the county town of Berkshire.

County Lock is a lock on the River Kennet in Reading town centre in the English county of Berkshire. It is now administered by the Canal & River Trust as part of the Kennet and Avon Canal. Downstream from the lock is Brewery Gut, a particularly fast flowing, narrow and dangerous stretch of the river.County Lock has the lowest rise of the locks on the Kennet, as boats only rise or fall about 30 cm (1 foot) in the lock. The main stream of the Kennet flows down the weir on the far side of the lock, while another arm of the Kennet disappears under the Bridge Street Roundabout.The first County Lock was built between 1718 and 1723, during the navigation works undertaken under the supervision of the engineer John Hore of Newbury in order to create the Kennet Navigation between Reading and Newbury. Initially the lock was located on the north side of the river, adjacent to Bear Wharf, but it was relocated to its current location on the south bank as part of the Reading waterworks improvement scheme of 1876.The land on both sides of the river adjacent to County Lock was formerly part of the site of Simonds Brewery. Brewery Gut takes its name from the brewery. In the days of horse haulage, this stretch of river had no towpath, and a long tow line had to be sent down-river on a specially designed float. To add to the difficulty, at its narrowest the gut is only 25 feet (7.6 m) wide, causing strong currents. Multiple vessels cannot safely pass due to the tortuous and narrow route, and there have been instances in the past of boats colliding and sinking. Today passage through the gut is controlled by traffic lights.Simonds' Brewery closed in the late 1970s, and most of the brewery buildings have been demolished. Around the lock itself they have been replaced by a mixture of apartments and offices, although the brewery's old stable building, which overlooks the lock, has been preserved and was formerly occupied by a Loch Fyne restaurant. The part of the brewery that enveloped Brewery Gut has been replaced by The Oracle shopping centre, and boats can be seen navigating through the middle of the Riverside Level of that complex, lined on both sides by restaurants and pubs.

The Oracle was a workhouse that produced cloth in the English town of Reading, Berkshire. The Oracle shopping centre, which now occupies a small part of the site, takes its name from the Oracle workhouse.

Reading Minster, or the Minster Church of St Mary the Virgin, is the oldest ecclesiastical foundation in the town of Reading, Berkshire, England. Although eclipsed in importance by the later Reading Abbey, Reading Minster regained its status after the destruction of the Abbey and is now an Anglican parish church. The minster gives its name to the street of St Mary's Butts, on which it stands. The Minster Church of St Mary the Virgin should not be mistaken for the similarly named St Mary's Church, Castle Street, which is only a few yards away.

Reading Nunnery was a nunnery in Berkshire, England that existed during the Anglo-Saxon period.It was established in 979. The site is now occupied by St Mary's Church.

St Giles' Church is a Church of England parish church in the town of Reading in the English county of Berkshire.

H & G Simonds Ltd was a brewing company founded in Reading, Berkshire, England in 1785 by William Blackall Simonds. The company amalgamated with Courage & Barclay in 1960 and dropped the Simonds name after ten years. Eventually the firm became part of Scottish & Newcastle who sold the brands to Wells & Young's Brewery in 2007 and closed the Reading brewery three years later.

Eurospeak Language School is an institution that specializes in English language training and cultural exchange. The school was founded in 1991 and is in Reading, United Kingdom. The founder of Eurospeak, Michael O'Brien, died in 2011. Eurospeak also has a "subsidiary" in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Each year, Eurospeak welcomes more than 1,349 students from over 71 nationalities. In May 2018, Eurospeak submitted a planning application to create new premises at Cumberland Place, Southampton. The planning application was approved, and Eurospeak Southampton opened in October 2018.

St Mary's Church, Castle Street is an independent church within the Continuing Anglican movement. It is located in the town centre of Reading, in the English county of Berkshire, and is a few yards from the similarly named, but much older Minster Church of St Mary the Virgin. In 1798, there was a disagreement between the Bishop and the congregation of St Giles' Church in nearby Southampton Street. Many of the congregation left and founded a new chapel in Castle Street, on the site of Reading's old gaol. This chapel eventually became the Church of St Mary, Castle Street.The church is a Grade II* listed building. The original 1798 building was a simple Georgian building, but in 1840 the present hexastyle portico in Corinthian style was added by local architect and builder Henry Briant. The frontage is rendered in stucco while the capitals of the portico are probably formed of Coade stone.The church has one of Reading's best church interiors, with a late-18th-century gallery in 5 bays with marbled Doric ground floor and Ionic gallery columns. There is a modillion cornice to the coved central ceiling and a small projecting chancel with a bay for the mid-19th-century organ. The instrument, by Vowles of Bristol, is dated 1870, and was moved to St Mary's from Bristol in 1987. The church used to be lit by two mid-19th-century cast iron chandeliers.Today the church forms part of the Church of England (Continuing), a small group of four congregations outside the Church of England, self-identified on their website as "evangelical, reformed, Anglican".

Heelas (now branded as John Lewis & Partners) is a major department store in Reading in the English county of Berkshire. It was known as Heelas until 2001 and that name is still in common usage. The store fronts on to Reading's main pedestrianised shopping street, Broad Street, and backs onto Minster Street and The Oracle shopping centre. The store has belonged to the John Lewis Partnership since 1953.