Friar Street is a

thoroughfare A thoroughfare is a primary passage or way of transport, whether by road on dry land or, by extension, via watercraft or aircraft. Originally, the word referred to a main road or open street which was frequented thoroughly. Different terms *Roa ...

in the English town of

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. It runs parallel to Broad Street, connected by Union Street, Queen Victoria Street and Cross Street. At the western end is the Greyfriars Church and at the eastern end are the

Town Hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or municipal hall (in the Philippines) is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses the city o ...

and St Laurence's Church.

History

Excavations carried out on Friar Street in 1997 at the location of a proposed extension

Marks and Spencer Marks and Spencer plc (commonly abbreviated to M&S and colloquially known as Marks & Sparks or simply Marks) is a major British multinational retailer based in London, England, that specialises in selling clothing, beauty products, home produc ...

store by the Oxford Archaeological Unit revealed successive layers of old buildings, some of which date back to the 13th century. The

Frank Matcham Francis Matcham (22 November 1854 – 17 May 1920)Mackintosh, Iain"Matcham, Frank" ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, accessed 7 July 2019 was an English architect who specialised in the design of theatres and ...

-designed Royal County Theatre, built in 1895, was located on the south side of Friar Street. It burned down in 1937. The opening of a

Sainsbury's J Sainsbury plc, trading as Sainsbury's, is a British supermarket and the second-largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1869 by John James Sainsbury with a shop in Drury Lane, London, the company was the largest UK r ...

supermarket in 1963 led to the closure of many smaller shops.

Friars Walk

Friars Walk shopping centre, located at the western end of Friar Street, opened in 1973–4. From around 2009 to 2019 it was derelict. For six years (up until 2018), Friars Walk was known as "The Mall" and used as a venue for

airsoft Airsoft, also known as survival game () in Japan where it was popular, is a team sport, team-based shooting sport, shooting game in which participants eliminate opposing players out of play by shooting them with airsoft pellets, spherical plast ...

and immersive zombie survival games. Zed Events have since moved the Zombie Mall experience to a new site to allow for demolition of Friars Walk as part of the Station Hill development. On 1 August 2019, a scaffolding collapse occurred at the demolition site.

References

{{Commons category Shopping streets in Reading, Berkshire