Marian Pilgrimage - Our Lady of Reading

Moving along the banks of the Thames the Pilgrimage now pauses at King Henry I’s great Cluniac Benedictine foundation of Reading Abbey. Its close connection with the descendants of the founder and proximity to Windsor ensured it hosted royal weddings and burials as well as Great Councils and at least one Parliament 

Reconstruction of Reading Abbey circa 1500

A model in Reading Museum

Image: Friends of Reading Abbey - Reading Museum

 

Plan of Reading Abbey

It appears similar to that of Bury St Edmunds.

The easternmost chapel seems to have been replaced by a larger Lady Chapel in later centuries

 

Image: Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture 

An older plan that indicates the later Lady Chapel but not the two flanking chapels. This does include the known claustral buildings 

Image: Friends of Reading Abbey

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 As I have pointed out in my notes for other years, all of which are accessible from my post last year are accessible at Marian pilgrimage - Our Lady of Reading

To that I would add the revised and updated Wikipedia

entry at Reading_Abbey

It is good to learn from that about the conservation and enhancement of the site. Reading was one of the great abbeys of medieval England yet its bartered rubble core remains were to the uninitiated unappreciated. They certainly were and are a testimony to the fury of destruction that fell on the abbey in 1539 and the martyrdom on the site of the last abbot, Bl. Hugh Farringdon.  

 

Together with new features in the already fascinating Reading Museum - with a sizeable display on Roman Silchester and a nineteenth century embroidered facsimile of the Bayeux Tapestry -  Reading Abbey is very well worth visiting

May Our Lady of Reading intercede for us and our intentions

 

Jesu mercy, Mary pray