We use cookies to improve your experience, some are essential for the operation of this site.

Reading, Forbury Gardens, Berkshire

Location
(51°27′24″N, 0°58′4″W)
Reading, Forbury Gardens
SU 718 736
pre-1974 traditional (England and Wales) Berkshire
now Reading
medieval Salisbury
now Oxford
  • Ron Baxter
  • Ron Baxter
05 September 1996, 20 April 1997, 28 October 2007, 18 February 2013

Please use this link to cite this page - https://www.crsbi.ac.uk/view-item?i=14530.

Find out how to cite the CRSBI website here.

Feature Sets
Description

Forbury Gardens is a public park occupying part of the area of the abbey nave and the precinct. It is bounded by Forbury Road on the N, the Forbury on the W, Abbots Walk on the S and St James's RC church, Priest House and former school to the E. The park was formally laid out in 1857-59 and a tunnel connecting the park with the abbey ruuins was constructed towards the end of that period, at the SE corner of the park. Abbey material found during the construction work was incorporated into various structures in and around the park: the Forbury arch that covers the tunnel linking the park and the ruins; a grotto in the NE angle of the park; and the outside of the E wall of the park. This faces the W wall of the complex that includes St James's RC church, and carved stones set in that are included in the report on St James, Reading.

Features

Exterior Features

Other

Comments/Opinions

Many of the stones find parallels elsewhere among the Reading Abbey material. Notable among these are the keystones of the W and E faces of the Forbury arch. The W keystone is a corbel similar to those seen on the churchyard folly in St Laurence's churchyard, the one excavated on the Yield Hall site and those set into gateposts at Caversham Court. The E keystone can be compared with example from the cloister, now in Reading Museum (e.g. 1992.115). The bossed blind arch head in the park shelter also finds parallels in Reading Museum, at St Laurence's churchyard and among the carved stones in the Moat Garden of Windsor Castle.

Chevron ornament, found in all three locations in the Forbury Gardens, and beakhead were found in the Forbury Arch and the E wall, were common forms od=f decoration at Reading Abbey; both to be see in large quantities among the cloister stones preserved in the town museum.

Bibliography

R. Baxter, The Royal Abbey of Reading, Woodbridge 2016

Historic England Listed Building, English Heritage Legacy ID: 38936 (on the NE shelter)

D. Phillips, The Story of Reading, Newbury 1980 (revised 1990), 130-31.

  1. C. F. Slade, The Town of Reading and its Abbey, 1121-1997, Newbury 2001, esp. 60-62, 85-89.