For a while now I have been trying to get round all the museums in the Reading area and I realised that I hadn’t actually been and done a proper viewing at Reading Museum itself. I corrected that today with a long wander around its galleries.
Outside
The museum is housed within the Reading Town Hall another beautiful Waterhouse designed building of which there are several around the town. The building contrains a concert space (where we also saw Luke Jerram’s Gaia a while back), cafe, shop and the registry office as well as the museum which occupies three floors on the left hand side.
Ground floor
The ground floor contains a history of Reading from the earliest settlement 500,000 years ago to the present day. It also has the toilets for which there is a code (1064) to access. On exiting the toilets, there’s a notice stuck to the door saying “Why is our toilet code 1064?” explaining the historic significance of it, which I thought was a nice touch.
Historically speaking, Reading is probably best known for its abbey, the jail, the “three Bs” (biscuits, beer, and bulbs), and, latterly, high-tech (which some have tried to make a fourth B by dubbing it bytes). All of these are covered through the usual objects, diarama, and panels, etc.
Since moving to Reading in 1988, the town has continually improved both the access to and signage of historic places around the town, and nowhere shows that better than the abbey. Started in 1121, building work continued for a further 200 years until it closed by Henry VIII in 1539 during the dissolution.
When I first moved here, the abbey was closed for public access as it was deemed unsafe, but now has reopened, and there are Abbey quarter panels around the town explaining abbey life, which are very effective. In the museum, this is expanded upon with some original stone works and other artefacts.
First floor
Up to the first floor which is taken up by one thing and surprisingly it’s the Bayeux tapestry! Actually it a life sized facsimile of the real thing and it’s truly a thing of beauty.
Embroidered by 35 women from the Leek Embroidery Society, who decided that England should have its own copy, it was displayed in various places around the country before being bought and gifted to Reading.
It is an almost faithful copy of the original with certain details expurgated by the censors of the Leek Embroidery Society, see below for example!
Of the time spent in the museum, the bulk of it was spent here looking at the beauty of the work, taking in the story once again, and generally marvelling that such a fine thing should have ended up in Reading.
Some facts and figures
- The Bayeux Tapestry (original and copy) is over 70 metres long and 50 centimetres high (231 feet by 20 inches).
- It is actually an embroidery and not a woven tapestry.
- It is embroidered on linen using 8 colours of woollen thread: terracotta; blue-green; sage-green; buff; greyish-blue; darker green; yellow; and a very dark blue.
- It was probably made during the 1070s for William’s half-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux.
- It was probably made in Canterbury. Odo became Earl of Kent after the Norman Conquest.
- The first written record of the Tapestry dates from 1476, when it was listed among the possessions of Bayeux Cathedral.
- It was almost destroyed in 1792, during the French Revolution, when it came close to being used to cover army wagons – but was rescued just in time.
- Reading’s replica took 35 embroiderers just over a year to make in 1885-6. It need not have taken any longer to make the original.
- The original can still be seen in the town of Bayeux in Normandy.
Second floor
The second floor has three rooms: the John Madjeski art gallery, Silchester gallery and the Atrium gallery.
The Silchester gallery and the atrium both contain artefacts from the Roman town of Calleva, now Silchester, close to Reading of which now all that remains are the walls but was once an important and thriving place. I have to say that taken out of context the exhibition was a bit dry.
The atrium with several mosaic floors from Silchester looked amazing bathed in light and was more interesting.
The John Madjeski gallery is a space that shows a rotating display of exhibitions and in the past I’ve seen In the Company of Monsters and Artic Mirage. I’m particularly looking forward to the upcoming exhibition on Reading’s DIGITAL Revolution.
Currently they are showing Art Stories where recent works of art acquired by the museum were on display. In one corner was a plastic sheet with five buckets and I initially thought that it was some sort of installation but turned out that they just had a leaking roof!
There is a final room which contains lots of stuffed animals but wasn’t really for me so I didn’t stop long.
Why go?
For me, there are two highlights in Reading Museum: the copy of the Bayeux tapestry and the John Madjeski art gallery. I think that the curators at Reading do a great job of putting on some really interesting exhibitions in the latter space, which give me at any rate reasons to come back on a regular basis.
I last visited Reading Museum when I was just 12 years old – have to go there again next visit!