Reading Museum

Reading Museum is Berkshire's premier civic museum, housed in the grand Victorian town hall in the centre of Reading and offering a collection of remarkable breadth and quality — from a full-size replica of the Bayeux Tapestry to the largest collection of Roman artefacts from Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester) anywhere in the world.

The museum was founded in 1883 and occupies a series of elegant Victorian galleries adjoining the town hall, with free entry ensuring that its extraordinary collections remain accessible to all. The building itself is a statement of Victorian civic ambition — Reading's prosperity in the 19th century, built on biscuits (Huntley & Palmers), seeds (Suttons) and beer (Simonds Brewery), funded magnificent public institutions, of which the museum is one of the finest.

The museum's most talked-about exhibit is its full-scale replica of the Bayeux Tapestry — one of only three complete reproductions in the world and by far the best accessible to the public in Britain. The original 11th-century embroidery, which records the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, is kept in Bayeux in Normandy and cannot be reproduced in exhibition conditions that allow close examination. Reading's replica, made by 35 Leek women in Staffordshire between 1885 and 1886, is displayed along the length of an entire gallery and can be examined face-to-face in extraordinary detail. Seeing the Norman cavalry charging, the English housewives fleeing, and King Harold falling with an arrow in his eye at close range is an experience unlike anything the original in its glass case can provide.

The Roman collections from Silchester are of international archaeological significance. Calleva Atrebatum was a substantial Roman town whose medieval successors abandoned the site, leaving it remarkably intact beneath fields in Hampshire. Archaeological excavations from the 19th century onwards have produced exceptional finds now housed at Reading — pottery, metalwork, religious objects, commercial seals, and the evidence of daily life in a prosperous Romano-British community.

The fine art collection, the natural history galleries, the local history displays and the interactive galleries for families add further dimensions to a museum that consistently delivers more than visitors expect.