Lower Earley

Earley ( UR-lee) is a town and civil parish in the Borough of Wokingham, Berkshire, England. Along with the neighbouring town of Woodley, the Office for National Statistics places Earley within the Reading/Wokingham Urban Area; for the purposes of local government it falls within the Borough of Wokingham, outside the area of Reading Borough Council. Its name is sometimes spelt Erleigh or Erlegh and consists of a number of smaller areas, including Maiden Erlegh and Lower Earley, and lies some 3 miles (5 km) south and east of the centre of Reading, and some 4 miles (6 km) northwest of Wokingham. It had a population of 32,036 at the 2011 Census. In 2014, the RG6 postcode area (which is nearly coterminous with the area of the civil parish) was rated one of the most desirable postcode areas to live in England. The main campus of the University of Reading, Whiteknights Park, lies partly in Earley and partly in the borough of Reading.

The Harris Garden is a botanical garden of the University of Reading, situated about 2 miles (3.2 km) from the centre of the English town of Reading. It was established in 1972 and expanded into its current form in 1988. It is named after Professor Tom Harris, a distinguished palaeobotanist and keen gardener. Friends of the Harris Garden is an organisation set up with the aim of supporting the garden.The garden is situated on the Whiteknights Park campus of the university, but is separate from the rest of the parkland campus. It is accessed from the rest of the campus by an entrance behind the Harborne and Philip Lyle Buildings of the School of Biological Sciences.

Earley and Woodley is a constituency of the House of Commons in the UK Parliament. After the completion of the 2023 Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies, it was first contested at the 2024 general election. It is represented by Yuan Yang of the Labour Party.

The Region 6 War Room is a nuclear bunker dating from the early days of the cold war, on the Whiteknights Park campus of the University of Reading in the English town of Reading. It is one of a number of such Regional War Rooms built during the 1950s and designed to co-ordinate civil defence in the event of an attack on the country using conventional bombs or atom bombs.In the event of war, the war room would have housed the Regional Commissioner and his staff who would have directed the strategic response to air raids throughout the counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Dorset, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, and the Isle of Wight. The Regional Commissioner had the authority to assume the full powers of the central government in this region if contact with central government was lost.The war room takes the form of a two level windowless building, with the upper level being above ground level and protected by massive concrete walls, while the lower level is below ground level. The building is surmounted by towers containing filtration equipment. The bunker was designed to cope with attacks by weapons of the type used during the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.The development of the hydrogen bomb and the expectation of mutually assured destruction meant that the war room was both inadequately protected, and seen as too small to support the large live-in staff that would be needed after a major nuclear strike. Its principal responsibilities were transferred to a new Regional Seat of Government RSG-6 at Warren Row near Maidenhead. Some sources suggest that it continued in use as a civil defence communications centre for some period after this transfer.After ceasing to be used for civil defence purposes, the war room was taken over by the University and modified as a secure storage facility for use by the University Library. The building still exists, and can be found to the rear of the Department of Agriculture building, near the Earley Gate to the University's Whiteknights Campus. There is no public access to the interior of the building.In the University's updated development plan announced in autumn 2007, the bunker was marked as being scheduled for demolition, along with the wartime 'temporary office buildings'. The land was to be used for a car park.However, in March 2009, the threatened building received a Grade II heritage listing and is now protected.

The University of Reading Herbarium (RNG) is a herbarium on the University of Reading's Whiteknights Campus. Along with the Cole Museum, it forms part of the university's School of Biological Sciences, and is principally used for teaching and research purposes. The herbarium has over 400,000 specimens from around the world but has its most extensive collections from the Euromediterranean area, supplemented with special collections from the Falkland Islands and southern South America. The herbarium provides a research resource for some 50 staff and 500 students in Biological Sciences as well as providing material via loans to other registered herbaria.

Maiden Erlegh Lakes is a 10.2-hectare (25-acre) Local Nature Reserve Earley, a suburb of Reading in Berkshire. It is owned and managed by Earley Town Council.

Maiden Erlegh School is a coeducational secondary school and sixth form located in Earley (near Reading) in Berkshire, England.It was established in 1962 as a Comprehensive school secondary school to serve the families of Wokingham. Today it is the lead school of Maiden Erlegh Trust, having converted to an academy in 2011. It has capacity for 1,788 students but currently has 1,824 students on roll, over 400 of whom are in its sixth form. At the school's last Ofsted inspection (February 2020), it was named 'Outstanding' in all categories.In April 2010 Maiden Erlegh celebrated 25 years of German Exchanges with Gymnasium Schloss Overhagen.Maiden Erlegh School collaborates with local artists through its Community Arts programme, and hosts the Peacock Gallery which hosts regular exhibitions.Maiden Erlegh School was ranked as the best non-selective school in Berkshire in The Real Schools Guide 2019.

RAF Shinfield Park was a Royal Air Force administrative site in the south of Reading, Berkshire. It served as the Met Office residential training college from 1971 until 2002. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts was built on part of the site in 1978.

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) is an independent intergovernmental organisation supported by most of the nations of Europe. It is based at three sites: Shinfield Park, Reading, United Kingdom; Bologna, Italy; and Bonn, Germany. It operates one of the largest supercomputer complexes in Europe and the world's largest archive of numerical weather prediction data.

The University of Reading Atmospheric Observatory, is an atmospheric observatory and weather station located on the Whiteknights Campus of the University of Reading. It forms part of the university's Department of Meteorology. The site at its current location has been a centre for atmospheric research since 1970, but the weather record was originally started by the University College of Reading (a precursor of the university) in 1901 at the London Road campus as a rainfall station with a near complete daily record from January 1908. Automatic meteorological observations are continually recorded at the site and available online

Leighton Park School is a co-educational private school for both day and boarding pupils in Reading in South East England. The school's ethos is closely tied to the Quaker values, having been founded as a Quaker School in 1890. The school's ethos is described as achievement with values, character and community. It is one of seven Quaker schools in England.

The International Cocoa Quarantine Centre (ICQC), located in Arborfield, a suburb of Reading, Berkshire, United Kingdom, is an organization aiming to reduce the amount of disease affecting cocoa plants. Cocoa plants are quarantined in a 1,000-square-metre (11,000 sq ft) greenhouse before being transported across the globe. Quarantining cocoa plants is considered important because over 70% of the global cocoa supply originates from West Africa, and therefore the cocoa market is susceptible to any catastrophic effects that should occur in that region. The ICQC is part of the University of Reading. It was founded in 1985.