Description

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 29/10/2019

SU 7173 NE
1/409

READING
Blagrave Street
Reading Museum

(Formerly listed as Municipal Buildings Art Gallery and Museum)

24.7.74.

GV
II

1894 designed by a local architect (W.R Howell) to fill corner between concert hall and earlier school of art (qv). Asymmetric design in Gothic style closely echoing the style of the concert hall. Two storeys attic and basement. Dark blue brick with dark red brick and terracotta dressings. Sandstone plinth. Terracotta band over ground floor, the carved reliefs depicting history of Reading; (incomplete but Saxon foundation, founding of Abbey and Magna Carta however can be seen). Arcaded cornice continued right across.

Projecting terracotta polygonal porch turret, heavy arcaded and decorated ground floor, gables over first floor windows. Three bay gable to right matches entrance to concert hall (coped gable, poppy head saddlestone, arcaded band and polygonal corner buttresses); two attic lancets flanking statue of Queen Victoria in canopied niche, C13 style. Two-light and oculus windows on first floor, segmental headed on ground floor. Corner block polygonal, basically a projecting chamfered turret with steep saddleback roof and three extremely rich gabled French Renaissance dormers with C13 geometrical tracery. First floor blind with three canopied niches on corners. On ground floor five foiled lancets and a basement of segmental headed windows. Commemorative marble tablet on corner. Return to Valpy Street repeats Waterhouse and Lainson use of triangular section buttresses capped with pinnacles between bays. Five bays. First floor blind, ground floor has two-light and oculus pointed windows with gables over. Tiled roofs. Octagonal belfry at east end, crenellated.

This composition is loosely said to be derived from Waterhouses Manchester Town Hall. Despite some similarities with other Gothic-style buildings in Manchester's Albert Square it is in fact much more closely related to the Waterhouse and Lainson blocks adjacent.

Listing NGR: SU7166873631

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Reading Museum at Wikipedia
• Reading Museum official website
• Wikidata Q6941004

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Historic Environment Law: Planning, Listed Buildings, Monuments, Conservation Areas and Objects by Harwood, Richard (2012) Paperback
• 
  ENGLAND GUIDE TO POST WAR LISTED: A Guide to Post-war Listed Buildings
• 
  The green guide for historic buildings: how to improve the environmental performance of listed and historic buildings
• 
  Herefordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Cumbria: Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Devon (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)