Reading

Reading grew at the meeting of the Thames and the Kennet, its market and waterways making it an important Berkshire town. Its great abbey, founded by Henry I in 1121, became his burial place and a prominent religious house. The abbey's precinct and the town beside it were closely connected for many centuries of the Middle Ages.

Henry VIII's dissolution brought that relationship to an abrupt end in 1539. Abbot Hugh Cook Faringdon was executed and the abbey's wealth passed to the Crown. During the Civil War Reading was held by a Royalist garrison until a Parliamentary army besieged it in 1643. The town surrendered after bombardment and a siege lasting about ten days, leaving its inhabitants to contend with the damage and demands of war.