Holybrook is a

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...

, forming a contiguous part of

Reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of Letter (alphabet), letters, symbols, etc., especially by Visual perception, sight or Somatosensory system, touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process invo ...

West Berkshire West Berkshire is a local government district in Berkshire, England, administered from Newbury by West Berkshire Council. History The district of Newbury was formed on 1 April 1974, as a merger of the borough of Newbury, Bradfield Rural Distric ...

and is a mixture of urban, suburban land with watercourses and flood meadows in

Berkshire Berkshire ( ; in the 17th century sometimes spelt phonetically as Barkeshire; abbreviated Berks.) is a historic county in South East England. One of the home counties, Berkshire was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II as the Royal County of Berk ...

, England. The parish takes its name from the

Holy Brook Sacred waters are sacred natural sites characterized by tangible topographical land formations such as rivers, lakes, springs, reservoirs, and oceans, as opposed to holy water which is water elevated with the sacramental blessing of a cleric. ...

, a watercourse which forms its southern boundary and which is a corollary of the

River Kennet The Kennet is a tributary of the River Thames in Southern England. Most of the river is straddled by the North Wessex Downs AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty). The lower reaches have been made navigable as the Kennet Navigation, which � ...

. Its main settlements are part of Calcot those commonly known as Beansheaf Farm and

Fords Farm Fords Farm is a suburb in West Berkshire, west of Reading. Overall, it is in the Royal County of Berkshire in England. Fords Farm lies south of the Bath Road The A4 is a major road in England from Central London to Avonmouth via Heathrow ...

, Holybrook and occasionally considered part of Calcot or Southcote which overlaps with this area.

Geography and history

Historically, since before the

Norman Conquest The Norman Conquest (or the Conquest) was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of thousands of Norman, Breton, Flemish, and French troops, all led by the Duke of Normandy, later styled William the Conque ...

, this was part of the parish of Reading, when its Southcot or Southcote part was a well-

dispersed settlement A dispersed settlement, also known as a scattered settlement, is one of the main types of settlement patterns used by landscape historians to classify rural settlements found in England and other parts of the world. Typically, there are a numb ...

. Holybrook is composed of two suburbs of Reading: Beansheaf Farm and

, together with that part of the older suburb of Calcot that lies south of the A4 Bath Road. The church of St Michael in this area was built in 1967, one of only a small minority built to serve a new parish in that decade.St Matthew, Reading
The Church of England. The civil parish dates from 2000 when it was created from the part of

Theale Theale () is a large village and civil parish in West Berkshire, England, southwest of Reading and 10 miles (16 km) east of Thatcham. The compact parish is bounded to the south and south-east by the Kennet & Avon Canal (which here incorpor ...

east of the

M4 motorway The M4, originally the London-South Wales Motorway, is a motorway in the United Kingdom running from west London to southwest Wales. The English section to the Severn Bridge was constructed between 1961 and 1971; the Welsh element was largely ...

Demography

Governance

The parish has an elected parish council, and falls within the area of the

unitary authority A unitary authority is a local authority responsible for all local government functions within its area or performing additional functions that elsewhere are usually performed by a higher level of sub-national government or the national governmen ...

. The parish council and the unitary authority are responsible for different aspects of local government. The parish is in

Reading West parliamentary constituency Reading West is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2010 by Alok Sharma, a Conservative. He is currently serving in the Cabinet as the President for COP26. Sharma previously served as the Business Secre ...

References

External links

Holybrook Parish Council
Suburbs of Reading, Berkshire Tilehurst West Berkshire District Civil parishes in Berkshire {{Berkshire-geo-stub