HM Prison Reading was built in 1844 as the Berkshire County Gaol in the heart of Reading on the site of the former county prison, alongside the site of Reading Abbey and beside the River Kennet. Designed by George Gilbert Scott and William Boynthon Moffatt, it was based on London's New Model Prison at Pentonville with a cruciform shape, and is a good example of early Victorian prison architecture. The Pentonville Prison design of 1842 was based on the design of Eastern State Penitentiary of 1829 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was designed to carry out what was the very latest penal technique of the time, known as the separate system. As a county gaol, its forecourt served as the site for public executions, the first one in 1845 before a crowd of 10,000; after 1868 executions took place inside, the last one in 1913. It was used to hold Irish prisoners involved in the 1916 Easter Rising, for internment in both World Wars, as a borstal and for a variety of other purposes. Most of those interned during the First World War were of German origin but there were also Latin Americans, Belgians, and Hungarians. In 1969 the wing where the Irish had been held was demolished. In 1973 Reading was re-designated as a local prison, and around that time its old castle wall was removed. The building was designated as Grade II listed in 1978. In 1992 it became a Remand Centre and Young Offenders Institution, holding prisoners between the ages of 18 and 21 years. Accommodation at the prison consisted of a mixture of single and double occupancy cells, on three wings. There was also a residential unit of single occupancy cells for low-security 'open' prisoners. There were two education departments at the prison, one run by the Prison service and one by Milton Keynes College. The remand centre library was run by Reading Borough Libraries.
Closure
On 4 September 2013, it was announced that HM Prison Reading would close by the end of that year, and the prison formally closed in January 2014 under The Closure of Prisons Order 2014. There have been calls for the prison building to be preserved as a tourist attraction, and Reading Council have confirmed that they intend to retain the complex. In June 2014 it was proposed that the site could be converted into a theatre venue. However, in November 2015 it was announced by Chancellor George Osborne and Justice Secretary Michael Gove that the site was to be sold to housing developers. In May 2016 it was announced that the former prison would be made available as an arts venue for the Reading 2016 Year of Culture programme. In October 2019 the Ministry of Justice announced that the site was to be sold.
Notable former inmates
Oscar Wilde – author of poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol, based on memory of an execution that took place here while he was serving a sentence for homosexual offences
Charles Thomas Wooldridge – murderer, whose execution inspired Wilde's poem
