EDITOR'S NOTE
The town opens its doors. Heritage Open Days start on Friday and, for one weekend, the buildings you walk past every week — a Georgian chapel on Castle Street, the abbey's chapter house, a temperance tavern, the gardens behind Caversham Court's wall — let you in for nothing. On the same two days, the Abbey Ruins fill with music. Friar Street is shut all week for resurfacing and the Paddington line is thin again at the weekend, so plan the travel and the rest takes care of itself.
FEATURED THIS WEEK
Heritage Open Days — Friday 11 to Sunday 20 September, first weekend the big one
Saturday 12: St Mary's Chapel on Castle Street open all day, St Giles' Church and St Luke's open, a guided Camino walk in the footsteps of the abbey's pilgrims from 10am, and the Abbey Quarter Tour from Reading Museum at 11am. Sunday 13: the Rising Sun Arts Centre tells the story of its life as a temperance tavern (10am–5pm), and Caversham Court's gardeners give their tales behind the garden wall (11am–4pm). Everything is free; a few need booking, and the Foxhill House and Royal Berkshire Archives tours are already full. Full Reading programme →
BEST FOR KIDS
The Abbey Quarter Tour on Saturday 12 September, 11am–12.30pm, is the one to book: ninety minutes through the ruins, the gateway and the chapter house with a museum guide, free, and old enough to have proper stories in it. Pair it with the museum's free Reading: Then & Now exhibition afterwards. Rhymetimes are back to the full term-time timetable at all five libraries. Book the Abbey tour →
NEW THIS WEEK
The Lyndhurst is open again. The Watlington Street pub reopened on 25 August under new operator Stephen Williams after two months dark, with the beer list largely kept and Brett's Burgers ( the Friar Street name Reading remembers from the eighties ) back on the menu. It is the fourth change of hands in two years; this one runs six other pubs and says the locals are what will keep it open.
HEADS UP
Friar Street is closed from Monday 7 to Thursday 10 September between West Street and Station Road — crews work 7pm–1am but the road stays shut throughout. Bath Road (Hogarth Avenue to New Lane Hill) follows on Thursday to Saturday nights. And the Slough track work is back on Saturday 12 and Sunday 13: two of four lines to Paddington, amended timetable, no trains to Windsor & Eton Central. GWR planned engineering →
👨👩👧 Things To Do
Kids & Family
Heritage Open Days — Abbey Quarter Tour, Saturday 12 September, 11am. Free, guided, ninety minutes, from Reading Museum. Booking essential and places go.
Behind the Garden Wall, Caversham Court Gardens, Sunday 13 September, 11am–4pm. The people who look after the gardens tell you how, and why. Drop in, free, and the forecast says it'll be dry.
Rhymetime, all week. Free song-and-story sessions for under-fives at Reading Central (Tue and Thu), Palmer Park (Tue and Thu), Southcote (Thu), Whitley (Thu) and Tilehurst (Mon and Thu). No booking.
Adults · Date Night
Down at the Abbey, Friday 11 and Saturday 12 September, Abbey Ruins. Two single-day festivals inside the 900-year-old walls. Friday: Anthony Szmierek, Nubiyan Twist, Kathryn Joseph, Nathan Fake. Saturday: Joshua Idehen, Ibibio Sound Machine, C Duncan, The Wave Pictures and a long local undercard. Siren beer, local food, five minutes from the station. Check availability before you go — it has sold out before. Tickets →
Cold Comfort Farm, Progress Theatre — to Saturday 12 September. Stella Gibbons' comedy of the Starkadders, the woodshed and Flora Poste, in the Mount's 96-seat theatre. Last week of the run. Book →
Reading Raga Resonance, Great Hall, University of Reading — Saturday 12 September, 6pm. Indian slide-guitar master Pandit Debasis Chakroborty, over from Agra, with guitarist Giuliano Moderalli and tabla player Sam Evans. Not a thing you'll see twice in Reading. Tickets →
Weekend Events
Mon 7 Sep: Friar Street closes for the week. Warm, 23°C — the best day.
Tue 8 Sep: Rain most of the day. Rhymetime at Central and Palmer Park.
Wed 9 Sep: Showers. Bohemian Night open mic, 8.30pm.
Thu 10 Sep: Friar Street reopens overnight; Bath Road closure starts 7pm. Bayeux Tapestry tour, Reading Museum, 2.30pm.
Fri 11 Sep: Heritage Open Days begin. Down at the Abbey, day one. The Restarts at Face Bar. Showers on and off.
Sat 12 Sep: Heritage Open Days across town. Down at the Abbey, day two. Raga Resonance, 6pm. Amended trains to Paddington. Dry and sunny.
Sun 13 Sep: Rising Sun Arts Centre open day. Caversham Court gardeners' tales. Rail disruption continues. Dry.
Looking ahead: Heritage Open Days run to Sunday 20 September — Reading Minster, the Quaker Meeting House, Brock Keep and the Romans Reimagined day at the museum are all on the second weekend. The Forbury closes overnight 17–19 September and Blagrave Street on 21–22 September.
🏙️ What's New in Reading
The Lyndhurst is back, with Brett's Burgers. The Watlington Street pub reopened on Tuesday 25 August under Stephen Williams, who runs a clutch of Oxfordshire pubs and is understood to be taking on The Thirsty Bear round the corner too. Same beers, mostly; new kitchen doing steak, fish and chips and the burger Friar Street queued for in the 1980s. It has had four landlords since 2024, so the test is whether this one lasts.
Blue Collar Corner is here until 2031. The Hosier Street food market ( shipping containers, beach huts, big screens ) was only ever meant to run for five years from 2022. The council has now extended that to 2031, satisfied with how it's operated. That settles the one question hanging over the town's best cheap night out.
A Friar Street nightclub could become a corner shop. An application has gone in to turn the basement and ground floor of 5–6 Friar Street - Matchbox, then briefly Neighbourhood - from bar and nightclub into an off-licence and convenience store. Still under consultation, but another nightlife unit on that stretch moving to retail.
New gyms at South Reading and Meadway. The council has put £250,000 into new Technogym kit at both leisure centres - strength machines, plate-loaded equipment and a fresh cardio suite. If Rivermead is too far or too busy, these are now a better option than they were.
Team Sport wants a later bar. The Cradock Road go-karting venue, which had a £1.35m electric-kart refit in 2023, has applied to sell alcohol until midnight every day and play music from 9am. The licensing consultation closes on Tuesday 15 September if you want to comment.
🚧 Useful Reading Updates
Roads — Friar Street is the one. The stretch from West Street to Station Road is closed from Monday 7 to Thursday 10 September for resurfacing. Work runs 7pm–1am but the closure holds through the day too, so buses and traffic are diverted all week. Bath Road, from Hogarth Avenue to New Lane Hill, is closed overnight Thursday 10 to Saturday 12. Next up: Manor Farm Road (14–17 September) and The Forbury (17–19). Full schedule at reading.gov.uk →
Rail — thin timetable again at the weekend. Network Rail is back in the Slough area on Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 September, so only two of the four tracks between Reading and Paddington are open and services run to an amended timetable. No trains between Slough and Windsor & Eton Central either day; replacement buses go to Windsor & Eton Riverside, or on Saturday take South Western via Staines on the same ticket. The same again on Sunday 20 and a Paddington-only amendment on Sunday 27. GWR planned engineering →
Council and planning - a quiet week, with one big decision. Blue Collar Corner's extension to 2031 was the headline among sixteen decisions; the rest were householder extensions, tree works and conditions - plus permission for a Kendrick Road house to become a small children's care home, and for 18 Prospect Street in Caversham to move from restaurant to a mixed food-and-drink bar. Newly validated: the Friar Street nightclub-to-shop conversion, a scheme to rebuild the rear of the listed 50 Mount Pleasant as two flats, and a request from the Olympia Hall flats scheme on London Street to relax its sustainability rating.
COMING UP THIS WEEK
Mon 7 Sep: Friar Street closed (West Street–Station Road) until Thursday · warm and mostly dry, 23°C
Tue 8 Sep: Rain most of the day, 19°C · Rhymetime, Central and Palmer Park libraries
Wed 9 Sep: Showers · Bohemian Night open mic, 8.30pm
Thu 10 Sep: Bath Road closure starts 7pm · Bayeux Tapestry tour, Reading Museum, 2.30pm
Fri 11 Sep: Heritage Open Days begin · Down at the Abbey, day one · showers
Sat 12 Sep: Heritage Open Days — St Mary's Chapel, St Giles, Abbey Quarter Tour 11am · Down at the Abbey, day two · Raga Resonance, Great Hall, 6pm · amended trains to Paddington · sunny, 18°C
Sun 13 Sep: Rising Sun Arts Centre open 10am–5pm · Caversham Court gardeners' tales 11am–4pm · rail disruption continues · dry
HIDDEN GEM OF THE WEEK
St Mary's Chapel, Castle Street
The building with the six Corinthian columns that everyone assumes is a bank. It is a chapel, built in 1798 by a congregation who walked out of St Giles' after a row with the bishop, on the site of Reading's old gaol; the grand stuccoed portico was bolted onto the plain Georgian box in 1840 by local builder Henry Briant. Inside is a late-eighteenth-century galleried interior with marbled columns and an 1870 Bristol organ that arrived in 1987. It is Grade II* listed, still a working church, and almost never open to walk-ins — except this Saturday, 12 September, 9.30am–5.30pm, for Heritage Open Days, with shorter openings on Thursday 17 and Saturday 19. No booking. Ten minutes from the station, and worth twenty inside.
St Mary's Chapel, Castle Street © Stephen Richards, CC BY-SA 2.0 via geograph.org.uk / Wikimedia Commons
WEATHER THIS WEEK
Monday is the day to be outside - 23°C and mostly dry. Tuesday is a write-off, with rain for most of the day and a top of 19°C, then showers linger through Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, so Down at the Abbey's first night may want a coat. The weekend rescues it: Saturday is sunny and dry at 18°C, Sunday partly sunny and dry - ideal for Heritage Open Days and the Abbey Ruins.
👀 WORTH KNOWING
Baked ground floods faster. The council is asking anyone who has flooded before to get ready now: after the driest summer on record, rain runs off hard ground rather than soaking in, which is how the Showcase roundabout ended up under water last weekend. Sandbags, flood-guards and a plan for getting out are the three things they want you to have sorted before the autumn rain properly arrives.
Meningitis jabs for anyone heading off to university. The meningitis vaccine programme for young people and students is being expanded across the south east this month. If you have an eighteen-year-old leaving home in a fortnight who hasn't had it, the GP can do it before they go.
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