This is the Reading Gasworks taken on a sunny day in 1959.  The gasworks was situated on the Kennet and Avon Canal, in the forground.  Not far to the right of this picture was the first lock on the canal after the junction with the River Thames, and to the left the canal winds its way to Bristol. The streetlamp is fuelled by gas, and the slightly bent prong under the lamphousing is where the man checking the gas mantle could rest his ladder.  It is bent because local children climbed up and swung from it.  The photograph was taken from a narrow path leading down from Orts Road to the towpath between the simple cottages that had been built for the workers of the Great Western Railway Company.  Brunel's great railway brought prosperity and industry to Reading in the 1840s, until then a sleepy agricultural town on the Great West Road to Bristol.  It became famous for Huntley and Palmer's biscuits, and the tins in which they travelled to all corners of the empire.  Where the map was pink, you could be certain to find a biscuit made in Reading.  These young men are enjoying a break from what was probably tedious and grubby work, and feed the swans in the sunshine.  The gasworks are long gone now, and new developments occupy this canalside land. Taken on a MPPMicrocord camera with the excellent Ross Xpres lens, film probably Plus X developed in D76.

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