Reading Abbey

Pilgrims: the End of a Tradition

Pilgrimage to Reading became less important towards the end of the middle ages and the dining and reception areas of the Hospitium were converted into the Royal Grammar School of King Henry VII, (later to become Reading School), and only the dormitory was kept on to house the pilgrims. After the dissolution the dormitory was used as stables, then as barracks for the Civil War troops, and gradually fell into disrepair until purchased by Reading Corporation in 1884 and restored to house Reading College from 1892 until this expanded and moved to a larger site to become Reading University. The shells of the University coat of arms come, of course, from the pilgrimage shells of the Abbey. After serving as offices for Reading Borough Council until the move to the new Civic Offices in 1974, the dormitory building has been restored again and is ready for many more years in its varied and interesting life. What was left of the Hospitium fronting Blagrave Street was pulled down and rebuilt in 1786 leading to the present Town Hall and Museum of Reading.

The fate of the Relics at the Dissolution is unrecorded; quite possibly they were simply thrown out as worthless in the new religious ideas at the time. The Reliquaries which contained them were collected for the value of the melted down gold and silver and the jewels, the proceeds going to the royal coffers. A shrivelled human hand, now in Marlow Church, was reported to have been discovered in a niche in the ruins of the church in 1786 and is thought possibly to be the original Hand of St James, concealed for safety at the Dissolution. If would be difficult to tell for sure whether or not this is authentic but certainly the Hand lives on in the records of its power to attract pilgrims to Reading in their thousands over four centuries.

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