Servants of the Abbey: Economic Decay
The Holy Brook is now built-over as it flows through Reading. The Mill continued to operate up to 1959 when it closed down and was later demolished apart from the westerly of the two arches over the stream where the dog-tooth, twelfth century carving can be seen and evidence of two previous buildings of the arch. In its later years the Mill ground flour for Huntley and Palmers.
The area of the garden to the east of the Church disappeared under the County Gaol in 1793. Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol is a sad contrast to the monastery garden which once grew where he was imprisoned. The timbers of the Wharf were preserved for 500 years in the waterlogged soil by the river and extensive excavations in 1981-84 revealed the full layout, the first inland waterfront to be discovered in Britain. After the Abbey was dissolved the Wharf went out of use but revived again with the coming of the Kennet and Avon Canal in 1810. More land on the west bank was made up by the dumping of soil, including many broken tiles, out from the line of the Abbey Wharf and by putting in a new wooden frontage to hold the bank in place. Now the foundations of the new office block replace the timbers of the waterfronts.
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Watercolour painting of Abbey ruins by Herbert Beecroft
(c.1825), as viewed from the River Kennet (1946.222.1). The houses have long since
disappeared, as can be seen in the recent photograph of the
same view.
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