Short History

Just south of Reading, within the old parish of St Mary's, Coley grew from a cluster of fields on the Kennet into a seat closely identified with the Vachells for five centuries. By 1309 a Vachell purchase at Coley is on record, and before long a house at Coley had become their principal residence. Sir Thomas Vachell (d. 1638) lived there in some style; during the Civil War his widow, Lettice (née Knollys, later the wife of John Hampden), kept the place going through turbulent years. Tradition has it that King Charles I lodged at Coley House in 1644, a reminder that national events often brushed the doorstep of this otherwise quiet Berkshire estate.

In 1727 William Vachell finally unwound the long-settled family arrangements and sold Coley (with neighbouring Whitley) to Colonel Richard Thompson. The title then travelled by marriage and settlement: through Thompson's daughter Anne, wife of Sir Philip Jennings-Clerke, and their kinswoman Frances Jennings, the manor was conveyed in 1792 to William Chamberlayne. A brisk period of transfers followed. In 1802 the estate passed to Thomas Bradford and John McConnell—McConnell is commonly credited with rebuilding the mansion in the early nineteenth century—before being sold again in 1810 to John Berkeley Monck. Under the Monck family, Coley Park remained a coherent estate well into the twentieth century, its mansion, parkland, farms and tenancies forming a single, recognisable unit on Reading's southern edge.

That long continuity ended in 1937, when the Coley Park estate was broken up and sold by auction. With the lots dispersed, the manorial landscape that had grown around the Vachells' medieval purchase and matured under successive owners gave way to a more modern patchwork of holdings—bringing one of Reading's oldest landed stories to a close. 

Further Reading:

• Ditchfield, P. H., & Page, William (eds.) (1923). A History of the County of Berkshire, Vol. III. London: Victoria County History.
• Tyack, Geoffrey, Bradley, Simon, & Pevsner, Nikolaus (2010). Berkshire (The Buildings of England). New Haven & London: Yale University Press.
• Lysons, Daniel, & Lysons, Samuel (1813). Magna Britannia: Berkshire. London: T. Cadell & W. Davies.