1 Berkshire Record Office (hereafter cited as ‘BRO’), John Kendrick Accounts, Charity 1625-50, D/QR/19/2/1, The Last Will and Testament of Mr John Kendrick. The will was published as a pamphlet in 1625 to encourage imitation.

2 Kerridge, Eric, Textile Manufactures in Early Modern England (Manchester, 1985), pp. 233-34Google Scholar; Heaton, Herbert, The Yorkshire Woollen and Worsted Industries from the Earliest Times to the Industrial Revolution, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1965), p. 64 Google Scholar; Sidney, and Webb, Beatrice, English Poor Law History, Part I: The Old Poor Law (London, 1927), p. 53 Google Scholar; Morrison, Kathryn, The Workhouse: A Study of Poor-Law Buildings in England (London, 1999), pp. 4–5 Google Scholar.

3 Morrison, The Workhouse, pp. 4-5.

4 Statutes of the Realm, 18 Eliz c.3. The need to introduce public employment for the poor in parallel with punishment for vagrancy was first recognized in the Henrician statute of 1536, 27 Henry VIII, c.5. Slack, Paul, Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England (Harlow, 1988), p. 118 Google Scholar.

5 Statutes of the Realm, 7 Jas 1 c.4.

6 Statutes of the Realm, 39 Eliz I cc.5, 6; 43. Eliz I c.4. The Charitable Uses Act of 1601 codified and built upon legislation of 1572, 1576 and 1598. Acts introduced in 1598 enabled benefactors to give or bequeath lands in fee simple to erect a hospital, house of correction or almshouses without obtaining charters or letters patent and made provision for commissions to investigate breaches of charitable trusts.

7 Statutes of the Realm, 21 Jas c.1.

8 Only £30,000 of the one million pounds identified in Jordan’s study of philanthropy in ten English counties, 1480-1660. Jordan, Wilbur K., Philanthropy in England, 1480-1660 (Aylesbury and Slough, 1959), pp. 255-74, 370-71Google Scholar; Slack, Poverty and Policy, p. 164.

9 Mayor, C. H. (ed.), The Municipal Records of the Borough of Dorchester (Exeter, 1908), pp. 525-59Google Scholar; Slack, Poverty and Politics, pp. 182-92. Kendrick was one of the outstanding merchant benefactors of the early seventeenth century, cited in John Stow’s Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster and Thomas Fuller’s Worthies of England. Jackson, Christine A. (ed.), Newbury Kendrick Workhouse Records 1627-1641, VIII (Berkshire Record Series, Reading, 2004), P. viii Google Scholar.

10 Morrison, The Workhouse, pp. 3-10.

11 There has been considerable speculation about why and when the Reading workhouse became known as the Oracle. Dormer notes that the first recorded use of the name was in 1649, when ‘William Wright Dyer, promised unto Willyam Brickett, the iron pott which Mr George Thorne gave to the poor people at the Oracle house, to be used in common between them’. Man’s suggestion that the name was derived from a red or violet dye — orchil — prepared from lichens by the poor employed in the workhouse, is usually considered to be the most credible explanation of the name, but there is no real evidence. Dormer, Ernest W., John Kendrick of Reading and his Benefactions (Reading, 1927), pp. 45–46 Google Scholar. Up till the mid-nineteenth century. the Newbury workhouse was presumed to be a Tudor cloth hall and it is sometimes known as the Old Cloth Hall.

12 Kendrick also left £500 to each town to set up a loan fund for poor clothiers, £100 to Reading and £50 to Newbury to fund dowries for poor maids and further money for church charities.

13 The Protestant emphasis upon charity as a sign and fruit of faith rather than an activity procuring salvation had led to a utilitarian reassessment of the function and delivery of charity during the late sixteenth century. Heal, Felicity M., Hospitality in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1990), pp. 122-35CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Recent research emphasizes the need to consider the individual political and social motives of donors as well as the condition of the poor and structural and ideological developments. Cavallo, Sandra, ‘The Motivations of Benefactors: An overview of approaches to the study of charity’, in Medicine and Charity before the Welfare State, ed. Barry, Jonathan and Jones, Colin (London, 1991), pp. 46–62 Google Scholar (pp. 50-52).

14 Many similarly hoped that the work of the inhabitants would defray the cost of houses of correction whilst incarceration resolved the problem of disorder.

15 BRO, D/QR/19/2/1.

16 An occupational analysis based on probate sources suggests that at the peak of the two towns’ industrial success, more than 40% of the male working population of Newbury and at least 30% in Reading were employed in clothmaking. Jackson, Christine A., ‘The Berkshire Woollen Industry 1500-1650’ (doctoral thesis, University of Reading, 1993), pp. 274-75Google Scholar.

17 Jackson, ‘Berkshire Woollen Industry’, pp. 171-82, 233-49.

18 Guilding, J. M. (ed.), Records of the Borough of Reading: Diary of the Corporation, 4 vols (London, 1892-96), 11, pp. 278-80Google Scholar; D/QR/19/2/1, fols 2, 3, 13, 37.

19 Jones, Gareth C., History of the Law of Charity, 1532-1827 (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 73–75 Google Scholar.

20 Whilst Kendrick left bequests to all of his family, including distant kin; in his will, he appears to have distributed his largesse according to need. William Kendrick and his children received a mere £2,000 between them.

21 London, Guildhall Library, 13401, The Plan of the Oracle, Minster Street, Reading.

22 British Library, Papers relating to the Privy Council enquiry into the administration of John Kendrick’s charity 1631, Add. MS 72421 (Trumbull Manuscripts).

23 Sellwood, Peter H., ‘Newbury Cloth Hall origin and subsequent uses’, Newbury District Field Club, X (1957), pp. 21–41 Google Scholar (p. 22); Calendar of State Papers Domestic, Charles I, XXIV, appendix, p. 56.

24 Reading Library (Local Studies Collection), Charles Tomkins’s Plan of Reading, 1802; LM 756, John Willis’s Plan of the Town of Newbury and Speenhamland, 1768.

25 BRO, D/QR/19/2/1, fol. 7.

26 BRO, N/QK4/1. A transcript of this document is provided in Sellwood, ‘Newbury Cloth Hall’.

27 There were two Thomas Giles in early seventeenth-century Newbury one a mason, died in 1630 (ad 197ii) and the other a grocer, died in 1631 (will M247). The mason’s inventory value was modest and it seems likely that the grocer, whose will was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury like other leading burgesses, is the man selected to be one of the overseers.

28 BRO, D/QR/19/2/1, fol. 9.

29 BRO, N/QK4/1, Articles of Agreement for Building the Workhouse, 1626.

30 BRO, D/QR/19/2/1, fol. 9. Brian John’s trade is not specified.

31 Airs, Malcolm, The Tudor and Jacobean Country House: A Building History (Stroud, 1995), pp. 64–65 Google Scholar; Tittler, Robert, Townspeople and Nation: English Urban Experiences, 1540-1640 (California, 2001), p. 69 Google Scholar. As the seventeenth century progressed, more towns began to employ regular overseers for building works. Woodward, Donald, Men at Work: Labourers and Building Craftsmen in the Towns of Northern England, 1450-1750 (Cambridge, 1995), p. 166 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Tittler, Robert, ‘Political Culture and the built environment of the English country town, c.1540-1620’, in Tudor Political Culture, ed. Hoak, Dale (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 133-56Google Scholar (p. 137).

33 BRO, N/QK/4/1. Plan drawn by A. J. Campbell-Cooper and published in Sellwood, ‘Newbury Cloth Hall’.

34 Figure 9, for example, shows doors inserted at ground- and first-floor level. West Berkshire Museum, 1980.57.3, late nineteenth-century photograph of Newbury workhouse.

35 West Berkshire Museum, Historic Buildings Assessment, September 2001, WRC, ref. 01/00593/LBC.

36 It may have been a former clothier’s house, workshops and outbuildings since John Chamberlain’s father, Brian Chamberlain, numbered among the leading clothiers of late-sixteenth-century Newbury. Brian Chamberlain’s bankruptcy is listed in ‘A list of Bankrupts in several parts of the kingdom, 1571’, Ramsay, George D., John Isham, mercer and merchant adventurer: two account books of a London Merchant in the reign of Elizabeth I, XXI (Northamptonshire Record Series, Gateshead, 1962), p. lv Google Scholar.

37 Although Reading Corporation ordered in 1589 that ‘all such persons as have builded anye hoveli, or buildinge … which shalbe thoughte by the Maior and Burgesses to be inconvenient shall forthwithe take awaye all the thatche from such ho veils or buildings, and … no … persons shall henseforthe erecte and builde any hovells or buildinges … excepte the same shall be covered with tile’, neither town appears to have taken action in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries to enforce or encourage the use of bricks. There were no major fires in the two towns during the period. Reading Records, 1, p. 394.

38 Jackson, Newbury Kendrick Workhouse Records, passim. The following documents are transcribed in the volume: The Newbury Kendrick Workhouse account book (a day book maintained by Richard Derow), BRO, D/EPT/Qi; Extracts from Newbury Corporation records 1627-36, BRO, N/AC/1/1/2; List of debts due to Newbury Workhouse, 1641, BRO, N/QK4/2.

39 BRO, N/QK/4/1.

40 Jackson, Newbury Kendrick Workhouse Records, p. 215. Inventories frequently refer to wool lofts, picking lofts, mingling lofts, etc., e.g. BRO, D/A1/54/74b, the inventory of William Camber, Newbury, clothier, 1621.

41 Jackson, Newbury Kendrick Workhouse Records, p. 218.

42 Jackson, Newbury Kendrick Workhouse Records, pp. xxxii-iiiiv.

43 Jackson, Newbury Kendrick Workhouse Records, p. 211 and passim.

44 Jackson, Newbury Kendrick Workhouse Records, passim.

45 Jackson, Newbury Kendrick Workhouse Records, p. 211 and passim.

46 BRO, N/QK/4/1. The annual stocktaking accounts record a payment of £1 14s. od. for ‘finishinge the chimney peece in the great chamber’ in 1632. Jackson, Newbury Kendrick Workhouse Records, p. 213.

47 Jackson, Newbury Kendrick Workhouse Records, p. 210.

48 BRO, R/578, Reading Corporation Terrier 1807, fol. 8; Guildhall Library, 13401.

49 Guildhall Library, 13401, The Plan of the Oracle, Minster Street, Reading.

50 See below, p. 16.

51 Oxford Archaeology, The Reading Oracle Project Seminar: Information Pack, 2 vols (2003), 1, pp. 22–36 Google Scholar.

52 Reading Library, Local Studies Collection, R/KP ILL 1017A, ‘The Oracle and Minster Street, 1628, from a drawing’.

53 Jackson, ‘Berkshire Woollen Industry’, pp. 103,109,129.

54 BRO, R/Box bundle 3, item 2.

55 Oxford Archaeology, Information Pack, I, pp. 30–32 Google Scholar. The site previously belonged to the clothier and former mercer, Thomas Kendrick, father of John and William Kendrick, and before that, to the Bye family, another Reading clothing dynasty.

56 BRO, D/QR/19/2/1, fol. 7.

57 Reading Museum, 1970.72.1, Charles Tomkins’s engraving of Simon H. Grimm’s 1778 drawing, ‘View of the Oracle’, for the Revd Charles Coates’s The History and Antiquities of Reading (Reading, 1802)Google Scholar.

58 Reading Museum, 1987.3.1, Joseph Ince, ‘Oracle Gate’(c. 1850). The painting also illustrates the modification and deterioration of the workhouse entrance facade, for example the loss of the shaped gables and cornice. Nineteenth-century photographs such as W. H. Fox Talbot’s ‘The Oracle Gateway c1845’ (Reading Library, Local Studies Collection, R/KP PH 3721) confirm the modifications and deterioration seen in Ince’s painting.

59 Reading Library, Local Studies Collection, R/KP ILL 866, Detail from The Builder (1846). The drawing does not show the inscription.

60 Reading Museum, REDMG: 1958.220.1, REDMG: 1970.72.1; Reading Library, Local Studies Collection, R/KP PH 3721; BRO, R/578, fol. 8.

61 Oxford Archaeology, Information Pack, I, pp. 30–32 Google Scholar.

62 Measurements were taken from the nineteenth-century plan (Fig. 11) but this was found to have an incorrect scale. The measurements were therefore compared with measurements taken from the 1:1000 excavation map produced by Oxford Archaeology (Information Pack, II, Fig. 7) and a multimap 1:5000 map of central Reading (multimap.com, tele-atlas) and a multiplier of .55 applied to correct the scale. The estimated margin of error for the corrected linear measurements is 5%.

63 Guildhall Library, 13401, The Plan of the Oracle, Minster Street, Reading.

64 BRO, D/QR/19/2/1.

65 Some of the clothiers, particularly the principal undertakers, Thomas Kendrick and William Gandy, may also have used the site for the preparation and dyeing of wool. Kendrick and Gandy were required to pay for the equipment purchased from William Kendrick, the Corporation undertaking to reappraise and pay for the equipment when they ceased to be associated with the workhouse. BRO, D/QR/19/2/1, fol. 31.

66 BRO, D/QR/19/2/1, fol. 31.

67 BRO, D/QR/19/2/1, fol. 45.

68 BRO, D/QR/19/2/1, fols 20, 22.

69 BRO, D/QR/19/2/1, fol. 32.

70 The town finally acquired a purpose-built town hall with a spacious meeting chamber and assembly room in 1786. Philips, Daphne, The Story of Reading (Newbury, 1980), p. 37, 88Google Scholar.

71 Reading Records, III, pp. 180-81.

72 Morrison, The Workhouse, pp. 4-5; Reading Records, 11, pp. 59-60; Philips, Reading, p. 42.

73 BRO, D/QR/19/2/1.

74 BRO, D/QR/19/2/1, fol. 7.

75 For example, St John’s Canterbury (eleventh century), Arundel (1380), Donnington (1393), Ewelme (1437), St Cross, Winchester (fifteenth century). The courtyard plan was used for a number of prestigious hospital foundations in the early seventeenth century, including three founded 1607-14 by Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton at Greenwich, Castle Rising and Clun. Planned quadrangles are also found at Oxford and Cambridge Colleges from the fourteenth century onwards and by the early seventeenth century in educational establishments such as Sackville College, East Grinstead. Orme, Nicholas & Webster, Margaret, The English Hospital 1050-1640 (Yale, 1995), p. 85 Google Scholar; Prescott, Elizabeth, The English Medieval Hospital 1050-1640 (1992), pp. 48, 56, 84–86 Google Scholar.

76 BRO, N/QK4/1. Although the Newbury design was substantial and handsome, it did not compete with the conspicuous display of late medieval and early modern almshouses such as Ford’s Almshouses, Coventry 1509.

77 Tittler, Robert, Architecture and Power: The Town Hall and the English Urban Community c.1500-1640 (Oxford, 1991), p. 42 Google Scholar.

78 The guildhall chamber was supported on pillars with shelter for markets stalls beneath. Prison cells were added in 1684. Higgott, Tony, The Story of Newbury (Newbury, 2001), p. 43 Google Scholar.

79 Tittler, Architecture and Power, pp. 42-46, 48-50. Rothwell, Market Hall, Northamptonshire, is a good example of such advanced civic architectural taste. Built c. 1578, the building was essentially a monument to the power, sophistication and beneficence of Sir Thomas Tresham; Airs, Malcolm, ‘Architecture’, in The Cambridge Cultural History of Britain, ed. Ford, Boris, 9 vols (1989), III, pp. 47–97 Google Scholar (pp. 89-90).

80 Cherry, Bridget & Pevsner, Nikolaus, The Buildings of England, Devon, 2nd edn (London, 1952), p. 402 Google Scholar.

81 Use of the description ‘artisan mannerism’ follows John Summerson, who generated the term to describe the ‘popular’ architectural style developed by leading London craftsmen in the early seventeenth century which drew upon types of Mannerism found in both France and the Netherlands. Summerson, John, Architecture in Britain 1530 to 1830 (London, 1953), p. 142 Google Scholar.

82 Sherwood, Jennifer & Pevsner, Nikolaus, The Buildings of England, Oxfordshire (London, 1974), pp. 177-78, 215, 261Google Scholar.

83 Gee, E. A., ‘Oxford carpenters 1370-1530’, Oxoniensia, 17-18 (1952-53) pp. 112-84Google Scholar (PP. 170-84).

84 Pevsner, Oxfordshire, p. 177; Cooper, Nicholas, Houses of the Gentry, 1480-1680 (London, 1999), pp. 131-33Google Scholar.

85 The Company of Leathersellers, for example, added a service block and grand porch with columns and a broken pediment, to their hall in 1623. Summerson, Architecture in Britain, p. 148.

86 Prescott, Medieval Hospital, pp. 82-83.

87 Certainly no plat or plan (or even a building contract) has survived for Blandford Forum Town Hall. Titler, Architecture and Power, p. 47.

88 The flexibility is common to other surviving specifications. Airs, Building History, p. 87; BRO, N/QK4/2.

89 Woodward, Men at Work, p. 35.

90 BRO, N/QK/4/1.

91 Airs, Building History, pp. 119, 122.

92 Airs, Building History, p. 79.

93 PRO, C114/104, Kendrick Charity Account Book, 1626-39, C114/104.

94 Reading Records, 11, p. 340.

95 Reading Records, 11, p. 342. The price negotiated for bricks appears highly competitive. It certainly compares favourably with the late-seventeenth-century range of 9s. to 18s. per 1,000 reported for London and up to 20-25S. per 1,000 in some southern counties (depending upon quality and distance transported) in The City and Country Purchaser (1703), quoted by Airs, Malcolm and Broad, John in ‘The management of rural building in seventeenth century Buckinghamshire’, Vernacular Architecture, 29 (1998), pp. 43–56 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 52).

96 Reading Records, 11, p. 345. The sales catalogue confirms the use of oak for joists and girders. Reading Museum, Extract from the Sales Catalogue for the Oracle Workhouse, 1850, p. 12.

97 BRO, D/QR/19/2/1, fol. 9.

98 BRO, D/QR/19/2/1, fol. 37.

99 BRO, D/QR/19/2/1, fol. 9.

100 Airs, Building History, pp. 115-16, 136.

101 Reading Records, II, p. 360. Complaints about insufficiently burnt bricks were common. Airs, Building History, pp. 115-16.

102 BRO, D/P 89/5/1, Church Wardens’ accounts, St Nicholas’s Church, Newbury, p. 5. West Berkshire Museum, Paul Cannon ‘Newbury Castle: A reassessment of the Historical evidence’, p. 8.

103 Oxford Archaeology, Information Pack, p. 33.

104 PRO, C114/104; BRO, The summer rate of 14d. per day paid to Newbury’s journeymen carpenters compares favourably with the summer range 12-16d. per day paid to Oxford carpenters, 1630-34. Brown, Henry Phelps and Hopkins, Sheila V., A Perspective of Wages (London, 1981), p. 11 Google Scholar.

105 BRO, D/QR/19/2/1, fo.. 9.

106 PRO, C114/104.

107 Airs, Building History, p. 176.

108 Jackson, ‘Berkshire Woollen Industry’, pp. 274-75. The figures had remained static from the sixteenth century. They compare closely with the proportion of building tradesmen found in occupational analyses based on Freemen’s Rolls for Leicester and Coventry in the early sixteenth century (4-4.5%) but are considerably lower than the 12% found in early seventeenth-century Exeter. Woodward, Men at Work, p. 22.

109 BRO, MS Wills, Berks, the administration of Francis Cole, 1639 ad.; the administration of Peter Middleton, administration 59iii; the administration of Thomas Giles, senior, administration 197ii, the inventory of Walter Ernes, 1634, D/A1/65/151a. Inventories provide a useful guide to wealth and status but only include a valuation of leases and not of property owned.

110 BRO, R/HMC/LVI, Regulations and Ordinances of the Reading Gilds.

111 BRO, R/HMC/XLVII, Reading Freemens’ Records 1604-94.

112 BRO, N/AC2/1, Book of Ordinances of the Borough of Newbury.

113 BRO, R/HMC/XLVII.

114 BRO, R/HMC/XLVII.

115 BRO, D/QR/19/2/1, fol. 37; British Library, Papers relating to the Privy Council enquiry into the administration of John Kendrick’s charity 1631, Add. MS 72421 (Trumbull Manuscripts).

116 Privy Council Registers, 1, pp. 275-76; PRO, C114/104. Jackson, Newbury Kendrick Workhouse Records, pp. 208-11.

117 BRO, D/QR/19/2/1, fols 9, 10, 24, 25, 37; PRO, C114/104.

118 British Library, Papers relating to the Privy Council enquiry into the administration of John Kendrick’s charity 1631, Add. MS 72421 (Trumbull Manuscripts); BRO, D/QR/19/2/1, fols 9,10, 24, 25, 37.

119 Morrison, The Workhouse, p. 6.

120 Tittler, Architecture and Power, pp. 48, 50-54.

121 Jordan, Philanthropy, pp. 368, 372, 376-77.

122 Tittler, Architecture and Power, p. 55.

123 Airs, Building History, pp. 100-03.

124 Machin, Bob, Rural Housing: An Historical Approach (Historical Association Pamphlet, London, 1994), p. 29 Google Scholar.

125 Reading Records, III, pp. 270-72, 406, 408,410. BRO, D/QR/19/2/1, fols 2, 3, 4,18. The tardiness may have been caused by investment difficulties in the cloth trade but it is interesting to note that Halstead, in conjunction with his father-in-law, Abraham Chamberlain, purchased the manor of Sonning in 1627. Dormer, Ernest W., John Kendrick of Reading and His Benefactions (Reading, 1927), p. 12 Google Scholar.

126 Town corporations were not inclined to resort to commercial loans during this period and instead turned to leading burgesses for loans. Reading Records, 11, pp. 384, 406, 408, 410; BRO D/QR/19/2/1, fol. 9.

127 BRO, D/QR/19/2/1, fol. 14; Reading Records, 11, pp. 353-54.

128 Reading Records, II, p. 339.

129 In view of Kendrick’s disinclination to move, the mayor and burgesses may have been making the best of a difficult situation.

130 British Library, Papers relating to the Privy Council enquiry into the administration of John Kendrick’s charity 1631, Add. MS 72421 (Trumbull Manuscripts).

131 BRO, D/QR/19/2/1, fol. 27; Reading Records, III, p. 27.

132 Jackson, Newbury Kendrick Workhouse Records, pp. xxxviii, xliii-xliv.

133 In the inventory taken of stock in 1636, 48% of the workhouse’s circulating capital was tied up in unsold cloths and unpaid debts from drapers. Jackson, Newbury Kendrick Workhouse Accounts, pp. xxxviii-xxxix, 222-24.

134 Jackson, ‘Berkshire Woollen Industry’, pp. 184-88.

135 Jackson, ‘Berkshire Woollen Industry’, pp. 214-19.

136 Reading Records, 11, pp. 348, 353; BRO, D/QR/19/2/1, fol. 5; Acts of the Privy Council, XLVI, p. 304; Privy Council Registers, 1, pp. 218-19.

137 Victoria County History of Berkshire, 4 vols (1906-24), II, p. 329; Dormer, John Kendrick, pp. 28-33; Privy Council Registers, 1, p. 276; BRO, D/QR/19/2/1, fols 52, 54; Reading Records, III, pp. 435, 448, 455; PRO, Equity proceedings in the court of Exchequer, Orders and Decrees, E125/22, fol. 423b; E125/24, fols 21-24, 119-23; Jones, History of the Law of Charity, pp. 73-75.

138 By this date Laud was pressed by political difficulties. Reading may have taken precedence due to the urgent need to forestall the City of London claiming the bequest for Christ’s Hospital.

139 PRO, C114/104; Jackson, Newbury Kendrick Workhouse Records, p. xli; BRO, N/QK4/2, List of Debts to Newbury Workhouse, 1641.

140 Morrison, The Workhouse, pp. 22, 54-59.

141 Reading Records, III, p. 67.

142 British Library, Papers relating to the Privy Council enquiry into the administration of John Kendrick’s charity 1631, Add. MS 72421 (Trumbull Manuscripts).

143 Jordan, Philanthropy, p. 271.

144 Soldiers were billeted in the workhouse during the Civil War period and Winch sought to offset his debts to the workhouse charity claiming that ‘When the Kinges soulyeres in the time of war was in the towne it cost me almost as much money as this debt is for to keepe up the house orr else they would have pulled it downe’. Reading Records, iv, p. 129, 334, 523; BRO, Reading Box 67, bundle 2, item 16.

145 Reading Records, iv, p. 522.

146 Over the course of two centuries, employment was provided for the poor in making both fine and coarse cloths and in pinmaking. BRO, R/578; Phillips, Reading, p. 84.

147 BRO, R/578; Phillips, Reading, p. 54.

148 Jackson, Newbury Kendrick Workhouse Records, p. xlii.

149 Sellwood, ‘Newbury Cloth Hall’, pp. 27-31; Garlick, Vera F. M., Newbury Scrapbook (Newbury, 1970), p. 110 Google Scholar.

150 Sellwood, ‘Newbury Cloth Hall’, p. 34.