Cuttings from The Reading Citizen
1937
Between 1920 and 1940 Reading Gaol was closed as a prison. In 1920 it became the county secure food store - according to The Times newspaper it contained over 100 tonnes of tinned salmon. The buildings were put to other uses over the next twenty years including a driving test centre, government pensions office, army recruiting office and, as war loomed, the regional Air Raid Precautions HQ.
The Reading Citizen was the socialist newspaper for the town from 1924 to the early 1950s. In the 1930s The Citizen reported how some Reading Councillors thought the prison should be handed to the Council for other uses or even be pulled down. Councillors argued that pulling down the prison would create work for unemployed men and the site would be a green lung in the heart of Reading. In 2013 it was announced that the Prison was permanently closing, but it is now protected as a Listed Building and will be sensitively converted to a new use.
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