Reading Abbey

The Abbey Site: Saxons and Vikings

To set the stage for those who lived and worked at the great monastery which was Reading Abbey we must go back half a million years to the Ice Ages when the converging torrents of the Thames and Kennet gouged out their channels to leave a gravel spur where later the Abbey was to stand. Reading was not chosen for settlement by prehistoric or Roman men and women and it was the Saxon Reada and his followers, the Readingas, who began our town. Their huts were probably located around the area of the present St. Mary's Church, with their fields stretching onto the gravel spur.

A theme running through the story of subsequent events on this spur of land is the oscillation between violence and peace. The tranquillity of the early settlement was cruelly broken in AD 870 when the marauding Viking army arrived from the north of Britain and dug themselves in on this spur to the east of the village. From here they rode out to do battle with King Ethelred of Wessex and his brother Alfred at Ashdown on the Berkshire Downs and back here they retreated after their defeat. A Viking warrior buried with his sword and horse on the slope down to the Thames may have died as a result of this battle. 

After Ethelred's death Alfred became king and his victorious campaign against the invaders was a turning point in the history of England and eventually led to a division of the country between Saxon and Viking. However the final victory went to the warriors stemming from the northern lands when William the Conqueror with his army of Normans or 'northmen' successfully invaded in 1066.

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