Something new for Heritage Open Days this year and arguably, something without any heritage— a trip up the newly opened ONE Station Hill building in Reading. Having done all the other things on offer and seeing that this offered the opportunity to look out onto the roof of Reading, we were keen to go.
Missed the Mark
There were two dates offered – one on the Saturday offering “a tour, a temporary exhibition and a short talk” and one on Sunday, the same but without “a short talk”. We opted to go on the Sunday principally as it avoided the talk element.
The organisers were as good to their word, the Sunday event did come without “a short talk”. Instead it came with a “long and tedious talk” running to nearly an hour and a half. 😱 To be fair, the person giving the talk was clearly knowledgable but hadn’t taking into account his audience or the amount of slides that we’d be willing to sit through. Having sat through these there was a Q&A session at the end where a bloke at the back continued to ask questions ignoring the daggered stares from the rest of the audience!
One interesting tidbit of information was that the developers had spent more than £1.5M on public works of art around the site. A small amount from a development that cost over £300M, but money very well spent in my opinion.
Please Release us!
Finally, we were allowed to stand up and take in the views from the balcony, which were worth waiting for. Reading is not a beautiful town, but it is interesting to see it from a new angle— particularly the sweeping wings of the extension to the railway station, which I found impressive, and Waterhouse’s Town Hall sitting next to the ugly, nondescript office buildings.
The speaker said one aim of the Station Hill development was to make an impressive impact on those arriving via the station. Now that it is open I can really see that has been achieved – I just wish it hadn’t take an hour and a half to tell me!
