A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE PARISH

In the late 18th and early 19th century, Woodley was made up of 700 separate properties and pieces of land identified in records as "Wheble & Palmer Land". James Wheble owned Woodley Lodge and from 1802 Mass was celebrated there in the private chapel by a French emigre priest, Abbe la Blandiere, one of six in Reading at the time.

James Wheble gave the land on which St James' Church was built in Reading but died the year in which it was completed in 1840. His son James Joseph Wheble inherited Woodley Lodge and in 1850, he married Lady Catherine, daughter of the Earl of Howth. Following the Catholic Hierarchy Act of 1851, he was appointed High Sheriff of Berkshire in 1854.

The population of Woodley was 860. There is no record of Mass being celebrated in Woodley again until Easter Sunday 17th April 1938.

The Parish was established in 1946. A church was built with the help of the Polish community in Reading on the present shopping centre site between the National Westminster Bank and the Estate Agent. A hall was added later which served as a school for a while.

Lessons were given by a group of eight Sisters of Mercy who came to Woodley from Abingdon in September 1956. They opened St John Bosco Convent School on the 24th of the same month; the convent school closed in July 1981.

In 1960 Fr. Lane moved the centre of the Parish to Western Avenue and saw the completion of the junior school in 1966, the church in 1970/71 and the infant school in 1974.

The Parish has about 500 catholic homes in Woodley, Sonning and parts of Early. About 350 people attend Mass weekly.

We are part of the Diocese of Portsmouth, (where the Cathedral is) under the guidance of Bishop Crispian Hollis; and belong to the Loddon Valley Pastoral Area which includes the Parishes of Twyford, Earley and Whitley.