Woodley, Berkshire

St John the Evangelist, Woodley, is a parish church in Woodley, close to Reading in the English county of Berkshire. It is a Church of England church in the Reading Deanery of the Diocese of Oxford.The church was built by Robert Palmer in 1873. In 1987 an extension was added to the south-east wall. Adjacent to the church is the St John's Centre, a Grade II listed building which was formerly a Church of England school but is now used as the church hall and office. Across the road from the church is the Rectory, though the present incumbent chooses to live elsewhere in the parish.

Emmanuel Church, Woodley, is an Anglican church in Woodley, close to Reading in the English county of Berkshire.It is a Church of England church in the Reading Deanery of the Diocese of Oxford. The church was planted in 1991 by a group of people from St John's and St James' Churches led by Church Army evangelists Richard and Mandy Priestley. In 2023, the vicars were Rose Jones and Claire Jones.In 2010, District Church Councils were established at both St Johns Church and Emmanuel Church giving a greater degree of independence to each church and enabling council meetings to be much more focused. The District Church Councils were accountable to the Parochial Church Council which retained overall responsibility for governance in the parish. In April 2012, the parish boundaries in Woodley were changed and Emmanuel Church became part of an enlarged parish of Southlake St James. Both parishes in Woodley form the Woodley Group Ministry, and maintain close relations. The change of parish also brought about a change of status for Emmanuel Church, which became a Conventional District in the parish of Southlake and now has its own Parochial Church Council. From 1 September 2018 Emmanuel was granted approval from Deanery, Diocese and Government to become its own parish known as Woodley Emmanuel, therefore having its own Parochial Church Council.

The Sonning Cutting railway accident occurred during the early hours of 24 December 1841 in the Sonning Cutting through Sonning Hill, near Reading, Berkshire. A Great Western Railway (GWR) luggage train travelling from London Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads station entered Sonning Cutting. The train was made up of the broad-gauge locomotive Hecla, a tender, three third-class passenger carriages, and some heavily laden goods waggons. The passenger carriages were between the tender and the goods waggons. Recent heavy rain had saturated the soil in the cutting causing it to slip, covering the line on which the train was travelling. On running into the slipped soil the engine was derailed, causing it to slow rapidly. The passenger coaches were crushed between the goods waggons and the tender. Eight passengers died at the scene and seventeen were injured seriously, one of whom died later in hospital. Details of the accident and subsequent proceedings were reported widely by the newspapers of the day.

The Reading Built-up Area or Reading/Wokingham Urban Area is a name given by the Office for National Statistics to a conurbation in Berkshire, England, with a population of 318,014. This was a significant decrease from the population according to the 2001 census of 369,804 due to Bracknell no longer being considered part of the built-up area, but forming part of the Greater London Urban Area instead. Its largest population centre is Reading, and it also includes Arborfield, Woodley, Theale, Crowthorne, Earley and Wokingham. Part of the urban area, Crowthorne, is just to the north of Sandhurst, part of the Farnborough/Aldershot Urban Area, and its eastern extremity is just west of Bracknell part of the Greater London Urban Area.

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.

The Loddon Bridge disaster was a collapse of falsework during construction of a reinforced concrete deck on the Loddon Bridge of the A329(M) motorway in Berkshire, England, on 24 October 1972. It killed three people and injured ten others. It is thought that a design error led part of the falsework, transitioning between the deck and the supporting towers, to be understrength and it failed by buckling or twisting. The part-poured deck fell into the river below. The collapse was investigated by Her Majesty's Factory Inspectorate and the contractor, Marples Ridgway pleaded guilty to a breach of the construction regulations at a trial in Bracknell, being fined £150 (equivalent to £1,930 in 2021). The collapse led to the Advisory Committee on Falsework, chaired by Brunel University vice-chancellor Stephen Bragg and consequently known as the Bragg Report. The committee, whose final report was published in 1975, made a number of recommendations for changes in how falsework was designed, constructed and dismantled. These formed the basis of British Standard 5975 The Code of Practice for Falsework, published in 1982. The Bragg Report had a wider impact on how temporary works were managed in the UK including establishing procedures and the position of temporary works coordinator.

Bulmershe School is a coeducational comprehensive school located in Woodley, Berkshire.

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.

Waingels College is an 11–18 mixed, secondary school and sixth form with academy status in Woodley, Berkshire, England.

Alder Moors is a 8.5-hectare (21-acre) Local Nature Reserve in Woodley, a suburb of Reading in Berkshire. It is owned and managed by Wokingham District Council.The name 'Aldermoors' derives from the alder trees that populate this reserve. It is ancient woodland with coppiced areas.

Sonning Hill is a hill near the village of Sonning in Berkshire, England, close to the River Thames. Towards the Oxfordshire side of the main river channel, there is a long thin island creating two branches of the river. The Sonning Cutting takes the Great Western Railway through part of the hill between Twyford and Reading. There are good walks by the river in this area. At the foot of the hill by the Thames is Ali's Pond Local Nature Reserve, a nature reserve laid out with paths and large ponds in 1997.The UK headquarters of two major software companies, Microsoft and Oracle Corporation are also located here on the Thames Valley Park business park.

The Museum of Berkshire Aviation is a small aviation museum in Woodley, a town in Berkshire, England. The museum is on the edge of the site of the former Woodley Aerodrome and many of its exhibits relate to the Phillips & Powis company, later renamed Miles Aircraft, which was based there from 1932 to 1947. Other aircraft exhibited were built by Handley Page (Reading) Ltd, and by Fairey Aviation at White Waltham near Maidenhead. Despite being a small museum, several of the exhibits are unique survivors. These include a Miles Martinet (a World War II target tug), the only Miles Student two-seat side-by-side jet trainer ever built, and a Fairey Jet Gyrodyne — a composite helicopter and autogyro, or gyrodyne. Other exhibits include: A Fairey Gannet carrier-borne anti-submarine aircraft, formerly operated by the Royal Navy. A Handley Page Herald turboprop airliner, designed by Miles and built at Woodley after Handley Page took over Miles' aircraft contracts. A Miles Magister two-seat basic trainer aircraft.