It’s time for the annual Heritage Open Days. I found this year that it was more difficult to find things to attend because many on the local list I have done before. I think that in future I may need to travel further afield. Anyway, I have booked onto a couple for this year starting today with The Great Hall at the University of Reading.
I’d actually been in the Great Hall before for the investiture of John Madjeski as Chancellor back in 2007. I had remembered the place as being huge but it seemed a lot smaller today. Maybe that was because it was empty or maybe it was just my memory playing tricks on me.
We were given a talk by the Friends of the University about the building and the organ. 1905 the foundation stone was laid and the building was completed a year later. They ran out of money to pay for the organ so had to wait until 1910 for it to be installed having been paid by subscription from the students.
It’s seen some interesting acts over the years including in 1967 Pink Floyd played and were booed off stage! They came back and played again in 1969 so the expereince can’t have been that bad.
It wasn’t until 1979 that they decided having changing rooms would be a good idea and tacked on an extention at the back. We were taken in smaller groups around these changing rooms and it was pretty much as one might expect – toilets, showers and sinks. Not very inspiring!
Then we were given a quick tour of the exterior where I discovered a plaque stating that Gustav Holst taught here for three years. I never knew this and was interesting as only a two weeks ago we’d been at the RAH for a performance of The Planets as part of The Proms. And then we were done.
