Summary
House, built between 1800 and 1830, ground-floor used as a commercial premise, and converted to office use by the mid-C20.
Reasons for Designation
51 Castle Street, Reading, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* as an early-C19 building which contributes to the character of an architecturally varied historic streetscape.
Historic interest:
* as part of the urban development of Reading’s ancient core.
Group value:
* the building is in close proximity to a large number of listed buildings and forms part of a strong historic grouping.
History
The crossroads formed by the north-south route of St Mary’s Butts and Bridge Street and the east-west route of Gun Street and Castle Street is believed to be the centre of the original Saxon settlement at Reading, established sometime before the ninth century with the lowest crossing point of the River Kennet lying a short distance away to the south. Reading was well-established by the time of the Norman Conquest, and the Domesday Book (1086) records six mills and a large estate in the town. St Mary’s Church, which lies on the north-east corner of the crossroads and was mostly rebuilt in 1551 and 1555, was the town’s primary church until the establishment of Reading Abbey in the C12 and became so again following the dissolution in the late 1530s.
Running west from the crossroads, Castle Street forms part of the ancient route through the town between London and the West Country, and the street historically contained many inns and guesthouses. As Reading expanded beyond its medieval limits during the C18 and C19, development spread further along Castle Street. Until the mid-C20, redevelopment on the street was piecemeal and mostly confined to individual plots, leading to the street’s great architectural diversity. This pattern was broken in the late 1960s and 1970s, with the construction of the expansive civic complex on the north side of Castle Street, and of the Inner Relief Road immediately to the west of the new complex. These major works required the demolition of most of the buildings on the north side of Castle Street and severed the more commercial, eastern end of the street nearer the town centre and the more residential, western end of the street as it becomes Castle Hill.
51 Castle Street is a terraced house built between 1800 and 1830, probably on the site of an earlier building. A building is depicted on this site in Coates and Tomkins’ map of 1802, but it is unclear whether or not the existing building was extant by this time.
The Ordnance Survey Town Plan of Reading (1:500, 1875) shows that there was a timber or iron outbuilding attached to the rear elevation of the building, which was subsequently replaced with a much smaller, single-storey, brick extension sometime before 1898.
The ground floor of the house appears to have been in use as a shop sometime prior to 1882. At this time, it was the premises of a pork butcher and dairyman, RW Baxter (Reading Observer, 11 March 1882, p4). Baxter advertised unfurnished rooms to let, presumably above the shop, in 1884 (Reading Mercury, 14 June 1884, p4). By 1967, the building had been fully converted to office use and was the premises of the London and Manchester Assurance Company (Reading Evening Post, 12 September 1967, p15).
Details
House, built between 1800 and 1830, ground-floor used as a commercial premise, and converted to office use by the mid-C20.
MATERIALS: the building is of red brick in Flemish bond with a rendered ground floor and a roof covering of slate.
PLAN: the building has a rectangular footprint extending south-east from Castle Street.
EXTERIOR: 51 Castle Street is of three storeys plus basement across two bays onto Castle Street, under a pitched roof. The western bay of the rendered and painted ground floor contains a six-panelled door with rectangular fanlight above and reeded casings. Immediately to the west is a tall, twelve-pane, fixed window with wooden glazing bars, with a reeded casing to the west matching those flanking the door. The eastern bay of the ground floor contains an eight-over-eight sash window. There are two, eight-over-eight sash windows each on the first and second floors, under gauged-brickwork heads, and a stone-coped parapet concealing the pitched roof. The chimney is located on the eastern half of the roof ridge. At the rear elevation, the basement level is rendered and painted white. There is a single-storey, brick extension with a hipped roof projecting along the western boundary of the property. There is a column of three, eight-over-eight sash windows in the eastern bay of the rear elevation, and two sash windows in the western bay located in-between the ground and first floors and first and second floors. The lower window is an eight-over-eight sash and the upper window is a six-over-six sash.
