The site of Reading’s former prison has a highly desirable location in the town’s centre and a celebrated history, not least as the setting of Oscar Wilde’s most famous poem, the Ballad of Reading Gaol.
But almost a decade after HMP Reading was closed, the historic building where Wilde was incarcerated for homosexual acts remains locked and inaccessible, while its owners, the Ministry of Justice, have been unable to find a commercial buyer for the site.
For local campaigners, businesses and politicians, who are remarkably united in a long-running bid to develop the prison as an accessible cultural and artistic hub, “there’s enormous frustration”, says Matt Rodda, the MP in whose constituency the prison site sits. “The fact that it’s taken 10 years to try to solve this, and lots of taxpayers’ money has been wasted mothballing the building, is really frustrating.”
On Saturday, he and others hope to give an extra momentum to their campaign with a march of supporters through the town centre, amid renewed hopes of a possible breakthrough for the stalled cultural project. “I think it is fair to say that the door is a little bit ajar with the MoJ,” says Rodda, “but now it is [a matter of] prising it open.”
“Reading has such an incredible history in the arts, but in Reading itself, there’s not really a place for them aspire to,” says Toby Davies, the artistic director of the local Rabble theatre company and a member of the Save Reading Gaol campaign. “Everybody has focused their hopes on this amazing jail, which is like a perfect package ready to go as a cultural space. But it’s stuck, and we’re all waiting.”
The purpose of the march, says fellow campaigner Heather Snaith, “is to put a rocket up it again, and to say: ‘We’re not going anywhere.’ We’re completely relentless about this thing.”
Wilde might be the four-acre site’s best known recent resident, but he is not its most distinguished. The prison was built on top of the ruins of the medieval Reading Abbey, once one of the largest royal abbeys in Europe, and its founder, King Henry I, was buried there in 1136. The grounds of the listed Victorian prison are thick with ruins and burials, both of ancient monks and more recent inmates.
That history, ironically, may be what has made it so difficult for the MoJ to find a buyer. After the prison’s closure was first announced in 2013, the government said it wanted the site to be developed for housing. But one developer that emerged as a preferred bidder in 2019 later pulled out after being told that its plan for a hotel and high density apartment blocks was unlikely to get planning approval in the historic site.
“The MoJ have been badly advised from the word go,” says Tony Page, the deputy leader of Reading borough council, which is leading the bid for the mixed use cultural development. “They thought they were dealing with some crappy old prison of the sort that they had closed before, and with very little historical or archaeological importance – they have now been disabused of that.”
The government is understood to have been in talks with another preferred bidder for some time, although the council’s offer of £2.6m for the site, made in 2021, has never been formally rejected. Page acknowledges that this will be lower than sums offered by developers, but says the challenges in developing the site greatly limit its commercial value. As the planning authority, he says, the council is “not looking at any use of the prison that precludes wider public access”.
Money may not be a problem in any event after Banksy, having painted a mural of an escaping prisoner on the wall of the gaol in 2021, offered to sell its stencil in aid of the arts centre campaign (“Converting the place that destroyed [Wilde] into a refuge for art feels so perfect we have to do it”), which could be worth up to £10m to the cause, it has been estimated.
Asked about the status of the sale process, the MoJ would say only: “We are currently considering the potential uses of this site and no decisions have been made.”
Following recent talks with the prisons minister, Damian Hinds, Rodda says the MoJ might be open to a different way forward. “The MoJ discussing with the commercial bidder for years, and that hasn’t come to fruition. So I would hope they could see that there’s a real advantage of working with the council – and looking at a different type of development.
“Ultimately, the best result for both Reading and the country [will be] to save this wonderful building and turn it into an arts and heritage hub. Not into luxury flats, or a large luxury hotel or some other development which will be out of keeping with its history.”
