Reading Crown Court is a judicial facility in

Reading, Berkshire Reading ( ) is a town and borough in Berkshire, southeast England. Located in the Thames Valley at the confluence of the rivers Thames and Kennet, the Great Western Main Line railway and the M4 motorway serve the town. Reading is east o ...

. It is a

Grade II listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern I ...

History

The building, which was designed by the county surveyor,

John Clacy John Berry Clacy (1810–80) was a Victorian architect whose practice was centred on Reading and Wokingham in the English county of Berkshire. Family John's paternal grandfather and his ancestors were long resident around Barkham in Berkshire. ...

, in the Baroque revival style and built at a cost of £21,644, was completed in 1861. It became the main venue for the

assizes The courts of assize, or assizes (), were periodic courts held around England and Wales until 1972, when together with the quarter sessions they were abolished by the Courts Act 1971 and replaced by a single permanent Crown Court. The assizes ...

from 1867 when

Abingdon County Hall Abingdon County Hall Museum (also known as Abingdon Museum) is a local museum in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, England. The museum is run by Abingdon Town Council and supported by Abingdon Museum Friends, a registered charity. It is a Grade II list ...

ceded that role to Reading. The design involved a symmetrical main frontage with seven bays facing onto The Forbury with the end bays projected forward; the central section of five bays featured a three-bay

portico A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many c ...

with

Doric order The Doric order was one of the three orders of ancient Greek and later Roman architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian. The Doric is most easily recognized by the simple circular capitals at the top of ...

columns; there were round headed

sash window A sash window or hung sash window is made of one or more movable panels, or "sashes". The individual sashes are traditionally paned windows, but can now contain an individual sheet (or sheets, in the case of double glazing) of glass. History ...

s flanked by

Ionic order The Ionic order is one of the three canonic orders of classical architecture, the other two being the Doric and the Corinthian. There are two lesser orders: the Tuscan (a plainer Doric), and the rich variant of Corinthian called the composi ...

columns on the first floor. The complex included the county police station which was built behind the courthouse. Following the implementation of the

Local Government Act 1888 Local may refer to: Geography and transportation * Local (train), a train serving local traffic demand * Local, Missouri, a community in the United States * Local government, a form of public administration, usually the lowest tier of administra ...

, which established county councils in every county, it also became the meeting place for

Berkshire County Council The Council of the Royal County of Berkshire, also known as the Berkshire County Council, was the top-tier local government administrative body for Berkshire from 1889 to 1998. The local authority had responsibilities for education, social servi ...

. The administrative staff and committee rooms of the county council were accommodated in the Shire Hall next door. In 1981 the county council moved to a new Shire Hall at

Shinfield Park Shinfield is a village and civil parish in the English county of Berkshire, just south of Reading. It contains and is administered by the unitary authority of Wokingham District. Shinfield Park is the northern part of the parish, becoming phy ...

and subsequently it was used solely by the

Crown Court The Crown Court is the court of first instance of England and Wales responsible for hearing all indictable offences, some either way offences and appeals lied to it by the magistrates' courts. It is one of three Senior Courts of England and Wale ...

. Important cases heard by Reading Crown Court included the trial and conviction of Leslie Bailey for the murder of Mark Tildesley in December 1992 and the trial and conviction of Llewellyn Adams, Indrit Krasniqi, Michael Johnson, Jamaile Morally, Joshua Morally and Adrian Thomas for the murder of Mary-Ann Leneghan in March 2012. It was also the venue for the Munir Hussain case, in which a businessman, Munir Hussain, was tried and convicted of assaulting a burglar, Walid Salem, in December 2009. The initial stages of the trial of Jed Foster for the killing of Andrew Harper were also heard at Reading Crown Court in August 2019, but on 19 September the

Crown Prosecution Service The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is the principal public agency for conducting criminal prosecutions in England and Wales. It is headed by the Director of Public Prosecutions. The main responsibilities of the CPS are to provide legal ad ...

said that they had discontinued the case against him.

References

{{Listed buildings in Reading Grade II listed buildings in Reading Crown Court buildings Government buildings completed in 1861