Reading is lucky to have its two rivers, the Thames and the Kennet; both are navigable, and one of them is positively canalized. No-one, to my knowledge, has dubbed it The Venice of South Central England (though the Oracle’s Riverside does regularly flood in imitation of the Piazza San Marco). Nevertheless, every June the Council stages an event called Waterfest, during which an enterprising boatman runs public trips around the town centre; and some of his passengers are surprised to find that you can indeed travel a circular route afloat.
Those who like to pore over old maps and accounts of the town will find that there was once a dense network of channels in the centre. Many have been filled in or diverted, but the Holy Brook remains, albeit secretively: its last half-mile might well be dubbed ‘Holey’ as it dives into a series of culverts, explorable only by the wetter sort of troglodyte. Every day thousands of people cross it unknowingly as they pass through Jackson’s Corner; it is conspicuous under the Central Library, just visible beneath King’s Walk, and newly revealed beside the Oracle. Many of the older generation can still remember it grinding corn at Soundy’s (formerly the Abbey) Mill. But follow it upstream, afoot or on a map, and you will find that it is six miles long and clearly no ordinary, single-purpose millstream.

The local historian Ernest Dormer, writing in 1937, argued that ‘the Brook is more closely connected with the rise and progress of ancient Reading than the Kennet, and certainly the Thames’. Although for much of its life it defines the southern edge of the western suburbs, it does indeed pass nearer than either of the regular rivers to both of the spots that have been regarded at various times as the town’s centre – the Butts and the Market Place – not to mention the demolished Yield Hall and (probably) the long-lost Castle. Dormer’s account of the Brook (see Bibliography) is the fullest I have found; he was followed, more than half a century later, by Gordon Spring, who – as an engineer working for the Borough Surveyor – had the benefit of inside (and underground) information. The third important published text is Hawkes and Fasham’s archaeological report.

The Brook ends peacefully at (Horse) Chestnut Walk, under the flinty chunks that are all we have of the mighty Reading Abbey; and a few yards upstream it undoubtedly drove their mill until as late as 1959. Its current name leads people to reasonably assume that it was created by – or for – the monks, some time after Henry Beauclerc set up the Benedictine establishment in 1121 ad; but a popular guidebook to the ruins suggests that it might be a wholly natural stream. Both Dormer and Spring realised that its upper reaches served at least one of the 5,624 mills mentioned in Domesday Book (1086), and that much of it therefore existed before the Abbey. Both writers agree with the early 19th century historian John Man’s assertion that the monks’ contribution was limited to extending it in the town centre; they certainly did not need to dig a six-mile leat to obtain water for any purpose. (There is an oft-copied story that their drinking supply came from Whitley Conduit (at Highgrove Street) in a pipe that tunnelled under the Kennet: this tale is supported by very little archaeological evidence, and Hawkes and Fasham agree with Spring that it seems unlikely. There was, after all, a well in the cloister.)

Dormer, who did not have the benefit of Gelling’s research into place-names, wondered what the Brook was called before the monks arrived. This remains a mystery – perhaps various lengths had workaday names indicating their local function – but we do know that the first surviving mention of a Holy name – in the form ‘Halowid Brook’ – is not found until after the Dissolution, in the Itinerary of John Leland. The earliest name we have, in a 14th century annotation referred to below, is ‘Garenter’s Brook’; Gelling quotes a document of 1441 referring to ‘Graniteresbrok’, and (crucially) another of 1552 helpfully mentioning ‘Le Granator’s Broke als [also] le Hallowed Broke’. A modern map of the town centre, based on a 1552 description, shows the stream as ‘Granalock alias Holy Brook’. A granator, garenter or granger was the owner or master of a grange or granary; the Abbey, indeed, had an office called the Granetary. The connexion with milling is obvious.

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