Farewell Three B's

For longer than I have been around, my local town of Reading has been known as the home to the 3B's.- Bulbs, Biscuits and Beer in the form of Sutton Seeds, Huntley & Palmers Biscuits and several brewers notably Symonds, who later became part of Courage Beer.

Sadly Sutton's uped to moved to Torquay years ago; their offices long gone and the fields they used to grow the seeds, now an industrial park that does at least bare their name.

Huntley and Palmers has also gone now. The one truely recognisable town centre landmark building left, now turned into trendy appartments for the good people of Reading. Their main site next door now demolished and rebuilt as the home to Prudential.

So what of the brewers? Well Courage moved out of the town centre in the 1970's to a (then) state of the art plant right by the M4 motorway. Through various changes in ownership the brewery is currently owned by Scottish and Newcastle, the UK's biggest brewer. This week they announced the now out of date plant is to close in two years, with the loss of some 300 jobs, bringing to an end the era of the 3B's. Kinda feel sad about that.

No doubt the real estate value is far higher than any benefits of continuing to brew on the site. I guess we'll end up with yet another "exciting business park" that will sit largely unoccupied, like the others in this area.

So as this doesn't sound all doom and gloom, Reading does have it's Football (Soccer) Club to be proud of: up there in the top flight, Premiership league. At least for the rest of this season. Come on The Royals!

Any history fans out there might like to research this some more and maybe take a look at Reading Abbey, now a ruin thanks to the sacking of church property by a certain monarch who didn't quite see eye to eye with the clergy. Such was the status of the Abbey and Reading in general, there is said to be a King burried here but also the town was once the only place outside London where Parliament could be held.