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Description: | A fascinating glimpse of the railway line advancing towards Reading. The town's days as a quiet market town were soon to be over. The line from Paddington began to be built in February 1836 and reached Twyford in 1839. Between there and Reading the great cutting at Sonning had already been underway for three years in conditions often made dangerous by rain and mud. Men, boys and horses were involved in a series of accidents which were regularly fatal but at last the cutting was completed. By 14 March 1840 Brunel, who had surveyed and supervised the building works, was able to make the first journey from London to Reading with the GWR directors. The anonymous artist of this watercolour has given the scene a bucolic tone when, in reality, working conditions were harsh and grim. On the other hand, such a mood seems appropriate for the last days of rural quietness in the area. The hill at Sonning must once have provided a fine view of distant Reading, surrounded by fields and watermeadows. The fields shown here, dotted with sheep, in fact soon became the site of the Suttons seed trial ground and then, in the 1970s, the site of an industrial and business zone. | Format: | image/jpeg | License: | http://www.sopse.org.uk/ixbin/hixclient.exe?a=query&p=gateway&f=generic_sitetext%2ehtm&_IXFIRST_=1&_IXMAXHITS_=1&cms_con_core_subtype%3acms_con_text_what=copyright&%3acms_sys_group=%22sopse%22 | Rights holder: | Reading Borough Council (Reading Museum Service) | Subjects: | transport event | Temporal: | start=1839-01-01; end=1839-12-31; | Source: | Sense of place SE | Creator: | unknown | Identifier: | http://www.sopse.org.uk/ixbin/hixclient.... | Language: | en-GB | Format: | image/jpeg | Go to resource |
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