This volume makes an important and timely contribution to the study of Reading Abbey, a royal foundation of major historical significance but one which has received relatively little scholarly attention. Reading Abbey was founded in 1121 by King Henry i and was intended from the outset to serve as a centre of royal ceremony and, ultimately, as Henry’s mausoleum. Reading’s geographical location made it ideally suited as a royal hub, strategically sited on water and road routes between Westminster and Windsor and royal centres in the south west. Unusually, the abbey remained in royal control after the Dissolution, with the claustral ranges incorporated into the courtyard layout of a royal palace, in use up to the Civil War siege (1642–3). Reading Abbey was studied by local antiquaries in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but has not attracted major architectural study, perhaps due to its poor state of preservation. The abbey walls were stripped of their fine ashlar facings, leaving substantial but amorphous ruins formed of rubble wall cores. The aim of Ron Baxter’s study is to make Reading Abbey more visible and recognised within ‘the discourse of English architectural history’.

He explores the history and architecture of Reading Abbey through chapters focusing on the foundation, pilgrimage and relics, death and burial, courtly connections, the Dissolution and architecture. There are two chapters devoted entirely to the architecture and sculpture of the cloister, representing the author’s expertise in Romanesque sculpture. Baxter is particularly concerned to show Reading Abbey as an innovator – for example, in the possible first use of beakhead ornament in England. He provides a useful synthesis of available historical evidence for relics, including a remarkable late twelfth-century relic list, and tombs and burials recorded in documents. He makes an important contribution to reconstructing the plan, form and massing of the abbey buildings. Information from antiquarian accounts has been combined with study of the standing remains to create a 3D-reconstruction (working with Stuart Harrison). Henry i’s church was a cruciform aisled building with a ten-bay nave, four straight chancel bays and an ambulatory with three radiating chapels. Elongated crossing piers supported a heavy crossing tower and the church was probably rib-vaulted throughout. Stylistic affinities are suggested with West Country churches, including Tewkesbury and Romsey, and Normandy, including Jumièges and Verneuil-sur-Seine. Reading Abbey is best known for its richly carved Romanesque cloister capitals, including an early rendering of the Coronation of the Virgin, and this volume provides a full descriptive catalogue. Baxter argues that these capitals were supported entirely on shafts, with no piers even at the angles of the cloister, suggesting that the structure was too light and skeletal to support a stone vault.

This book provides a useful description of historical and architectural evidence and is an essential foundation for future work. The obvious next step is integration with archaeological evidence (both published and grey literature), which is omitted from Baxter’s account. His study is particularly timely as the ruins of Reading Abbey have recently attracted local and national attention. The site reopened in 2018 after having been closed for a decade on grounds of health and safety. The ruins have been conserved and re-interpreted in a project led by Reading Museum and supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The abbey precinct has become the focus for the town’s cultural regeneration as the Reading Abbey Quarter, while the connection with Henry i inspired a local theatre company’s award-winning drama focusing on the king. Major elements of Reading Abbey’s archaeology fall within the curtilage of Reading Prison, a disused Victorian prison famously associated with Oscar Wilde. The site is currently being sold by the Ministry of Justice, with the future of the site and its archaeology currently uncertain. Perhaps inevitably, Reading has also been the focus of a Richard iii-style search for the king’s bones, so far mercifully limited to non-destructive investigation through geophysics. This context may help to explain Baxter’s ‘afterword’, expressing his fervent hope that King Henry’s bones have not been disturbed and never will be.