Reading Crown Court is a judicial facility in

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

. 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 Ir ...

History

The building, which was designed by the

county surveyor A county surveyor is a public official in the United Kingdom and the United States. United Kingdom Webb & Webb describe the increasing chaos that began to prevail within this same period in field of county surveying in England and Wales, with c ...

, John Clacy, 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 from 1867 when Abingdon County Hall 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 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 c ...

columns; there were round headed sash windows flanked by Ionic order 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 administrat ...

, which established county councils in every county, it also became the meeting place for Berkshire County Council. 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 and subsequently it was used solely by the Crown Court. 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 On the early morning of 7 May 2005, 16-year-old Mary-Ann Leneghan was stabbed to death in Prospect Park in Reading, Berkshire, UK. The previous evening, Leneghan and a friend had been kidnapped and subjected to hours of assault, rape, and druggi ...

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 advi ...

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