Any list of misused buildings in Reading has to start with The Lower Ship on Duke Street – a pub/hotel that’s been boarded up since the late eighties when it was sold to Yorkshire Brewery Samuel Smith’s. Continue reading “5 Reading buildings that could be put to better use”
The Kings Road / King Street area of Reading town centre is one of the areas undergoing significant changes. We’ve got banks becoming restaurants, offices changing colour or becoming homes, shops turning into cafes and bars, a King leaving King Street, and maybe even a local hero coming home. In this post I take a brief look at the different developments, with a delve back in time thrown in.
In a departure from suggesting huge infrastructure projects and expensive leisure facilities, in this post I call out a few more modest ideas to improve the image of Reading.
Last year it was announced that the BBC would vacate the 1850-built Caversham Park house, where its foreign media monitoring service is based, and sell off the estate. This week it emerged that the council and the BBC are in dispute over a “Tree preservation order” covering the site. The council has dug in meaning the BBC cannot start clearing the site in an attempt to maximise the appeal to any developer. Continue reading “Caversham Park – Blue Sky Thinking”
A year ago I set out half a dozen hopes and expectations for 2016. I think we’ve managed three out of six. Let’s take a look at what’s been ticked off, and throw in a few extra things to look out for in 2017. Continue reading “A look ahead to Reading’s 2017”
Whether it be for Queens, Kings or Friars, it seems Reading isn’t very good at “Walks”. This simple suffix seems sufficient to ensure failure – in Reading it’s a jinx. Here I review their recent tribulations and take a look at plans and possibilities to get them walking tall.
Continue reading “Walking the Walk – Queens, Kings & Friars”
Last Friday I attended a public exhibition at the Town Hall for revised proposals for the development previously known as Swan Heights to be built on the former BMW site on Napier Road. Here’s what I picked up, and some follow up thoughts… Continue reading “Swan Heights, the Thames and a Tunnel”
A couple of weeks ago I attended an exhibition in town called Reading 2050. The initiative seeks to create a vision for the development of the town. Their representative was an enthusiastic Scottish lady who talked visitors through some glossy but fairly non-specific visuals. Their document talks of three alternative visions:
Last week plans were submitted to the council for the redevelopment of the Madejski Stadium car park. I covered this topic when the idea was unveiled at a public exhibition in November. Now that the formal application has gone in, we can take a closer look at the detail. There will probably be two opposing camps, so I thought I’d present each side of the argument. Continue reading “Royal Elm Park – Two Sides to the Story”
It took all my powers of self restraint not to entitle this post “Reading the future”, but that’s the gist – as 2016 gets underway, what might the year hold in store for the town? If a town could write itself some new year’s resolutions then I’d hope to see the following amongst them.
Reading-on-Thames 