139-141 Oxford Road

Summary

A pair of houses built in the mid-C19 with ground-floor shops, now divided into flats and shops.

Reasons for Designation

139 and 141 Oxford Road, Reading, are listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as a mid-C19 building which contributes to the character of an architecturally varied historic streetscape.

Group value:

* the building is in close proximity to a large number of listed buildings and forms part of a strong historic grouping.

History

Until the C19, most of the land west of Reading town centre was open farmland crossed by two ancient routes passing through the town from London to the West Country. Today, the northern of these two roads is named Oxford Road, while the southern is named Castle Street/Castle Hill/Bath Road. Inns and some isolated dwellings probably existed on these roads before the C18. Fortifications were built throughout the area by Royalist forces garrisoned in the town during the Civil War with some of the earthworks surviving into the early C19.

From the early C18, development slowly began to spread westward along Castle Hill/Bath Road and Oxford Road. John Rocque’s Map of Berkshire (1761) depicts ribbon development along Castle Hill/Bath Road extending as far as the junction with Tilehurst Road, and individual houses within grounds along Oxford Road about as far as the present-day location of Russell Street. More comprehensive development of the area began in the early C19 and progressed gradually over the next 100 years. Development spread further along Castle Street/Castle Hill, with some of the earlier buildings depicted on Rocque’s map seemingly replaced. North-south link roads also were laid out across the market gardens that previously existed between Oxford Road and Bath Road. Terraced housing was erected in considerable quantities during the first half of the century to cater for a variety of social groups.

139 and 141 Oxford Road are a pair of houses built in the mid-C19 during the westward expansion of Reading’s inner suburbs. Labelled collectively with the adjoining terrace as ‘Hampden Place’ on the 1879 OS town plan of Reading, the building was in use as a post office from around this time until the 1910s and also accommodated a wholesale wine and spirit merchants trading as Bonny and King (Berkshire Chronicle, 3 July 1886, p5). Around the time of the First World War, the post office vacated the building, which continued to operate as a wine merchant into the 1960s (Reading Evening Post, 5 October 1965, p12). During the 1960s the building was split into two independent properties and it is likely that extensive alterations were made both internally and externally (to the shopfront) at this time to accommodate the change

Sometime between its initial construction and 1879, a two-storey extension with a carriage entrance was added along the property’s western boundary onto Russell Street. The rest of the property’s rear yard was progressively developed during the late C19 and was almost completely infilled by the early C20. Between 2009 and 2014, the two-storey extension and other outbuildings to the rear of 139 and 141 were demolished and replaced with a three-storey apartment block. At this time, various refurbishment works were carried out. This included the replacement of the timber sash windows on the north and west elevations with uPVC casements, the renewal of the roof covering and the removal of some internal partitions. The shopfronts are being repaired as part of the High Street Heritage Action Zone project (2023).

Details

A pair of houses built in the mid-C19 with ground-floor shops, now divided into flats and shops.

MATERIALS AND PLAN: the building is of red brick, painted on the north (Oxford Road) elevation, with a stucco door surround to number 139, iron and glazed shopfronts and a roof covering of slate. It is of three storeys.

EXTERIOR: the building is of four bays onto Oxford Road and two bays onto Russell Street. The hipped roof projects beyond the north and west elevations and there are two chimney stacks on the party wall between 139 and 141. On to Oxford Street, the ground floor contains two shopfronts with bracketed iron columns, rising from a simple plinth, separating full-height glazing, and recessed doorways. The western shopfront is larger. Both shopfronts have modern fascia boards. To the left (east) of the smaller shopfront is a modern door set within a large channelled stucco surround. Each property has two uPVC casement windows at the first and second floors.

The west elevation onto Russell Street has a simple brick-arched doorway and the painted and rendered remains of a signage board on the ground floor, and two uPVC casement windows each on the first and second floors. Adjoining the rear of the property is a two-storey apartment block built in 2012-2014.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

39094

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Pevsner, N, Bradley, S, Tyack, G, The Buildings of England: Berkshire, (2010), pp438-440

Websites
Reading Borough Council, History of Reading (2012), accessed 31 July 2023 from https://web.archive.org/web/20120425235452/http:/www.reading.gov.uk/residents/history-ofreading/
Ditchfield, PH, Page, W, A History of the County of Berkshire: Volume 3 (1923), pp.336-342, accessed 31 July 2023 from https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/berks/vol3

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