Reading Museum

Reading Museum stands inside the Victorian town hall in central Reading, a town in Berkshire. The building itself was built in stages between 1786 and 1897, with the main front designed by Alfred Waterhouse in 1875. The museum opened in 1883 after a wing for library and museum was added. By 1985 the library had moved out, leaving the museum and concert hall as the only remaining uses. A major refurbishment in the late 1980s returned the building to public use in stages from 1993 to 2000. The galleries trace Reading’s past from a Saxon settlement in the 6th century to the modern town. The Story of Reading Gallery uses oral history, interactive displays and real objects to show how Reading Abbey shaped the town. The Silchester Gallery displays finds from the nearby Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum, including the bronze Silchester eagle that inspired Rosemary Sutcliff’s novel The Eagle of the Ninth. A full-size replica of the Bayeux Tapestry, woven in 1885 by the Leek Embroidery Society, shows the Norman Conquest and links to Reading Abbey’s founder Henry I. A large atrium holds a Roman pavement mosaic from Silchester, surrounded by displays of Roman mosaics and ceramics by Alan Caiger-Smith. The Green Space gallery explains the area’s geology and wildlife, with an Iron Age dog skeleton and a red deer donated by George V. The Huntley & Palmers Gallery tells the story of Reading’s biscuit industry, showing factory life through photographs and film, including the earliest surviving British factory footage. The Windows Gallery presents sculpture and decorative art from Reading Abbey to modern works by Rodin and Epstein, while the Sir John Madejski Art Gallery hosts changing exhibitions in a recreated Victorian gallery.