Light and airy Atrium leads into a thriving church [GREYFRIARS CHURCH in Reading has recently seen the
opening of a new foyer, coffee shop and bookshop – with a new, wide doorway through into the church’s West End. It is light, contemporary and full of life. It is called The Atrium. The church dates back to 1285 on its current site. It was a Franciscan Friary, but was restored as a Victorian church in the 1860s. In 2000 it was re-ordered by Maguire & Co – predecessors to JBKS Architects, who designed The Atrium – and has since grown and developed into a thriving evangelical Anglican church. They had been desperate for more facilities and space for years, but the site was too constricted and difficult for any solution to be viable.
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Then God sent a breakthrough. Two adjacent properties, with their gardens abutting the Greyfriars site, came up for sale. They were both owned by Reading Borough Council and used as offices. It was ideal: the houses could be used for Greyfriars’ staff offices and the two gardens combined with the existing Greyfriars site to make room for a spacious, sky-lit link leading to much needed toilets. JBKS Architects had been trying to squeeze in a solution before, but it was impossible and unsatisfactory. Now, suddenly it was all possible; not just for toilets and offices but for a whole new glassfronted west end. That would replace the 1970s fortress-style building, which was working hard but way past its use-by date.
