Visitors to the Heritage Open Days events in September may be familiar with nearby 17 Castle Street in Reading. This intriguing 16th-century house, now a solicitor's practice, opens its doors each year at the event. This highlight examines a sale catalogue for this property, dated 1923, which illustrates part of its interesting history and hints at some of its diverse twentieth century uses (document reference: D/ENS/B5/10).
In 1923 the property was called ‘Lyndford House’ and is advertised as ‘one of the few remaining XVIth [16th] Century houses’. Prior to this, in 1907 it had been a surgeon’s premises. This Elizabethan house boasted ‘7 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 3 reception rooms, hall and domestic offices’. Behind the house there was a store room, stabling and garage and cart shed.
Unusually for a property of this age, it also offered ‘valuable factory premises’ at the rear. The plan enclosed in the catalogue shows a large factory and workshop space with a furnace and a yard stretching just before John A’ Larder Lane, leading to Bridge Street. John A' Larder's Buildings were nearby almshouses which were built around 1890 and demolished c.1970. According to a newspaper listing in the Reading Standard for the sale in 1923, there were entrances on both Castle Street and John A’ Larder Lane. The property is described in the sale catalogue as ‘suitable for manufactory, motor works etc, having a ground floor area of nearly 22,000 sq. Feet’.
The ‘excellent workshop’ must have caught the attention of Gascoigne George H. Co. Limited, silo engineers, who are listed at this address in the 1926 Kelly’s Directory. The business would become known for producing milking machinery with their main premises based in Berkeley Avenue. The records of Gascoignes are now held at the University of Reading Special Collections.
By 1927, Gascoignes were sharing the space with Ruse Marie & Co. Ltd, milliners. According to an advertisement in the Reading Standard in 1931, M. Ruse et Cie specialised in the sale of hats, frocks, coats and knitwear. Two very different trades managed to find uses for the facilities under one roof!
The description of the workshop space does sound impressive. It notes that ‘included in this Building is the Water Wheel and Shafting, which supplies the whole of the Property with an excellent supply of good water – consequently no Water Rate is payable’. It would certainly have been beneficial to be positioned so close to the River Kennet.
By 1934, the property had returned to its roots by being home to a physician and surgeon’s office when Eric M. MacLachlan settled there. MacLachlan is listed in the directories well into the 1960s before it was eventually passed to the current proprietors, Rowberry, Morris & Co., in 1971. It must be a testament to the place that it can retain occupiers for so long!
The RBA also holds photographs of the exterior, rear and gated entrance taken in 1942-1944. The exterior is strikingly unchanged to how it appears today. Long may this versatile historic building be a stable presence in the local urban landscape.
