Wedding Photographer Reading — Thames at Caversham, Henley-on-Thames and Basildon Park
Reading is Berkshire’s largest town and university city, positioned at the confluence of the Thames and Kennet rivers where the wooded Chiltern escarpment north of the Thames and the Thames valley’s chalk meadow landscape south of the river provide a landscape portrait environment of considerable Berkshire country house and riverside character within twenty minutes of the town centre. For Reading wedding photography, the town’s position between Henley-on-Thames (ten miles north-east, the Chiltern’s most elegant regatta town with the Royal Regatta course’s riverside and Temple Island) and Basildon Park (ten miles north-west, the National Trust’s most elegant Palladian country house in Berkshire) provides portrait landscape settings of national heritage quality flanking the town on both sides.
The Thames at Caversham and Henley-on-Thames
The Thames at Caversham — Reading’s northern suburb on the north bank, with the Caversham Bridge’s Georgian arch and the riverside walk extending east and west from the bridge along both banks — provides the immediate waterside portrait setting of considerable Thames valley character accessible from Reading’s town centre venues. Henley-on-Thames — the Chilterns’ most celebrated riverside market town ten miles north-east, whose Georgian Bridge of 1786 spans the Thames at the Royal Regatta’s starting point with Temple Island visible one mile upstream — provides a Regatta-town portrait setting of Georgian riverside grandeur: the bridge, the Hart Street Georgian town centre and the riverside meadows at Mill Meadows provide a classic English coaching-town Thames portrait.
Basildon Park, Mapledurham and the Berkshire Chilterns
Basildon Park — the National Trust’s finest Palladian country house in Berkshire, built 1776–83 by John Carr of York for Sir Francis Sykes, with the formal restoration of its Berkshire park by the National Trust including the walled garden, the octagon room and the formal parterre — provides a portrait setting of Palladian villa architecture of the highest English country house quality within ten miles of Reading. Mapledurham House and Mill — the Elizabethan manor of c.1588 above the Thames with the one surviving working watermill on the Thames, at Mapledurham village twelve miles north-west — provides an Elizabethan riverside manor and mill portrait setting of complete English watermill character. The Berkshire Chilterns’ beech woodland above Pangbourne and Streatley provide autumnal woodland portrait settings accessible for golden-hour sessions.