Junction Arch Heritage & Arts
Working to bring the entrance to Reading Old Cemetery into community use as a space for heritage and arts
We’re a social enterprise with a mission to restore the historic Arch at the entrance to Reading Old Cemetery and repurpose it and the area immediately behind as a community heritage and arts hub.
COMMUNITY CONSULTATION
Thank you to everyone who contributed!
It’s an exciting time for the Cemetery Junction Arch. We’re completing our contractual discussions with Reading Borough Council. We’ll soon be in a position to submit an application to the National Lottery Heritage Fund for a grant to buy the Arch, restore it and repurpose it as a space for the community.
Throughout October we received more than 100 responses, mostly supportive of our plans overall, several with some great ideas and important points that we’ll take on board as we develop our plans.
Watch this space!
Our Plans
The current owners of the Arch, Reading Borough Council, have agreed to give us 18 months to raise the funds we need to:
- Buy the Arch and the land immediately behind
- Restore the exterior of the Arch back to its original condition
- Develop a venue that will bring in the revenue needed to maintain it
The North Lodge would provide display space for heritage and art exhibitions and indoor café seating. The South Lodge would be available to let to charities, community groups, social enterprises or small creative businesses.
The former shower block would be brought back into use as toilets with disabled access.
Eventually we hope to build minimal impact structures behind the Arch, to form a garden café and a flexible meeting room/gallery space. In the meantime, on advice from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, we’ll be focusing on increasing access to and appreciation of heritage.
Project ideas
We plan to develop a mobile phone app that will enable visitors to step back in time to see the area around the Arch as it was in the past. It will feature the cemetery as it was in the 1850s, the gallows that stood at the junction before the cemetery was built and the leper hospital that we believe stood nearby in the 11th century.
As part of this project we will carry out detailed research into the buildings in the Junction, including ones that are no longer standing, and investigate other immersive ways to share what we discover.
This will include sketching and painting workshops by local artists in the cemetery and around the Junction, the results of which will be exhibited at the Arch.
It will also feature an exhibition of work by local sculptors. The sculptures could be placed around the cemetery, to surprise and intrigue visitors.
This will be centred around an aural history project, capturing the memories of older residents of the Junction area, past and present, before they are lost.
Get involved
If you’d like to help out or have any questions or suggestions, please email nick@junctionarch.org
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