Reader Brothers , builders

Reader Brothers was a firm of builders established in the 1890's by Tom and Richard Reader. They began work drafting designs in the front room of a terrace house in Hackney, renting lock-ups in the area. The firm expanded in the years leading up to the First World War building fashionable houses for the middle class. By the 1920's the firm was renting premises in a defunct Hackney corset factory. These premises seem to have been acquired as the firm re-built them to their own design in 1928.

The 1930's brought renewed prosperity to the firm. Between 1932 and 1939 they built and sold some 'two thousand houses' at Chingford, Winchmore Hill, Loughton, Cricklewood and Edgware, as well as undertaking housing schemes for the borough of Poplar and additional wings to Saint Andrews Hospital. Building began again after the Second World War along with work repairing bomb damaged properties. New designs were created in the late forties and fifties and extension work became more common. The work of the firm gradually moved eastwards, into what was once Essex, as land around London became more built-up. The firm was finally wound up in 1972/3.