Julia Fea meets Harold Hill, aged 73. Harold has been writing about local history for 25 years. He currently contributes to BBC Radio Berkshire and the Reading Evening Post.

"I love the whole atmosphere of the place – I’d hate to live anywhere else! The traffic isn’t good but it’s great for shopping," he says. "Being disabled, I love to escape to Silchester, Woodcote and Henley. If you’re young and active, and want to pop on the train to London, you can do that as well. I’d like to see Reading become a city and it would be lovely to have one or two multicultural cinemas. It’s a multicultural town, you see, and everyone gets on. Above all, what I enjoy about living here are the steamer ships and rowing trips up the river."

Reading through the ages

Harold wouldn’t have found ninth-century Reading quite such an easy place to live. The Danish Vikings who had been raiding England for decades, marched into the ancient county of Wessex in 871 and camped in Reading.

They left the following year, leaving a trail of devastation in their wake. Situated on flat land by the river, Reading was ideal for a settlement. By the time William the Conqueror published his Domesday Book in 1086, the town already had more than 600 inhabitants.

Domesday

Domesday declared it a Designated Borough, which conferred the privilege of self-government.

Henry I recognised the potential of Reading too, when he founded Reading Abbey in 1121. He also granted the town the right to hold a weekly Sunday market, which brought prosperity and by 1253, Reading was permitted to trade free of tolls throughout the county. Despite Reading Abbey falling prey to dissolution in the hands of Henry VIII’s Reformation in 1538 (only ruins remain today), the town prospered. By the mid-sixteenth century, it was the largest town in Berkshire, with a population of 3,000.

Its main trades were corn, which was sent up the river to London, and cloth. Reading continued to grow and was sufficiently important by 1832 to return two members of Parliament, which continues to this day. Elected town councils were introduced in 1835 and 1839 saw the opening of the largest hospital in the county, the Royal Berkshire. But it was the railway that revolutionised Reading, as it did so much of Victorian England. It came in to the town in 1849, instantly opening up a far wider world of commerce and transport. Reading became a vital place for production, with the largest biscuit factory in England (Huntley & Palmer’s) and many breweries, including Simmond’s.

Car manufacturing

The town’s status was formally recognised in 1887, when it was granted city borough status, separating it from the rest of the county. The arrival of the motor car in 1895 brought further industry to Reading, this time in the shape of car manufacturing and it staged an International Road Conference in 1913. Between 1951-91, the population of Berkshire nearly doubled, much of it in the Reading area, thanks to the construction of Lower Earley, one of Europe’s biggest housing estates, in the 1980s.

Reading is now home to several international companies, particularly in the field of technology. The town, bidding for city status, is the epicentre of the so-called "Silicon Glen", the area of prime business sites along the M4 corridor. It’s situated ideally within easy commuting distance of London, with road, rail and even air transport. Those Vikings were definitely on to a good thing.