History
Note: Most of the information on this page was taken from the Internet so I cannot guarantee its authenticity.
John Bucknell and Family
Owners of the Coley Park estates 1937-1955. The farm continued to be run by the Bucknell family until the 1980's when it was sold for future redevelopment as private housing.
The combined estates were later purchased in 1937 by John Bucknell of Coley Park Farm for £4,875 consisting of Coley Park Estate; of about 520 acres with a mansion, gardens, park, three dairy farms (Coley Park Farm, Southcote Farm and Southcote Manor Farm), Kennett Moor (20 acres) and also Second Goslings Moor - both part or formerly part of Little Coley Farm; several closes of meadow, formerly part of Pigney Meadow, with right of access by horse training path, cottage to north side and adjoining Holy Brook, right of way across Meadow over Old Orchard and a small piece of land near Kennett Wharf in the parish of St Mary.
Also including; land on the west of a new road known as Brook Street West, land on the east side of Brook Street, 2 messuages known as Holy Brook View, Brook Street, 31 Lower Brook Street, also indemnity relating to Rusthall, Bath Road, building land at the junction of Bath Road and Southcote Lane, Wilton House and sanatorium (part of school at Wilton House), Parkside Road; premises formerly known as 'The Rosary', later as Silvester's preparatory school, with pasture, sheds and pavilion, Berkeley Avenue; the Upcross Hotel on Berkeley Avenue.
Some of the land was then sold to the Reading Corporation in 1952 for the construction of housing in Southcote, namely Southcote Lane and Aldworth Close.
According to records of Blandy and Blandy, Solicitors, of Reading, John Bucknell's wife Annie Bucknell, died in 1945. (I am trying to establish if this was the wife of John (Johnny) Bucknell who would have been John Bucknell's father and owned Coley Park Farm since the early 1900s).
John Bucknell died in May 1954 and on February 18, 1955, his wife Margaret Jane Bucknell sold the remaining land on the estates to various purchasers for a freehold price of £6271. It totaled an area of 12.5 acres and was a mixture of allotment gardens (near Bath Road) and gravel pits near Presentation College on Southcote Lane.
The area of land consisting of the now Wensley and Lesford Roads was purchased in October 1956 by the Reading Corporation for a future council housing estate. the cost was £4,700 and consisted of 9.4 acres.
Milk Can and Churn from Bucknell's Farm
