The current building dates from around 1200 although there has probably been a church on the site of St Mary’s for over a thousand years. As a minster church, the vicar and clergy looked after the townspeople as well as those living in the countryside around Reading. Most of the church was rebuilt in the mid-16th Century using stone taken from the dissolved Reading Abbey, giving St Mary’s its notable chequered brickwork pattern. Further restoration followed in the 19th and early 20th centuries with some interesting 17th Century fittings surviving.
