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Gone Shopping's Photographs
Colour photos of known date and location taken specifically for use as reference material for Gone Shopping.
Third Party Colour Photographs - Good
Colour photos, or combinations of photos, taken by others that provide a clear view of an address at a purported date.
Third Party Colour Photographs - Poor
Colour photos taken by others that provide an unclear view of an address at a purported date. Typical reasons for lack of clarity include poor focus, oblique angles, being significantly obscured by something in the foreground, or being a distant background element.
Third Party Black & White Photographs - Good
Monochrome photos, or combinations of photos, taken by others that provide a clear view of an address at a purported date.
Third Party Black & White Photographs - Poor
Monochrome photos taken by others that provide an unclear view of an address at a purported date. Typical reasons for lack of clarity include poor focus, oblique angles, being significantly obscured by something in the foreground, or being a distant background element.
Google Maps
Although Google Maps is primarily a web mapping platform, since 2007 it has allowed users to leave reviews for establishments noted on its maps. Google (est. 1998) launched Google Maps in 2005.
Tripadvisor
This customer review site and online travel agency was founded by Stephen Kaufer and Langley Steinert in 2000. It is headquartered in Needham, Massachusetts. Its UK arm was incorporated in 2005, with a head office in London.
Trustpilot
This customer review site was founded in Denmark in 2007 by Peter Holten Mühlmann. It is headquartered in Copenhagen. Its UK arm was incorporated in 2013, with a head office in London.
Yell
This local search engine was launched by BT in 1996. Unlike the Yellow Pages from which it derived its name, Yell listings are not particularly useful to Gone Shopping as, unlike a paper directory, they are not year-specific. However, Yell also permits users to leave reviews against its listings and they are dated.
Miscellaneous
This is a catch-all for various other review-oriented blogs and sites, which may be niche or otherwise obscure.
Reading & Thames Valley Area 'Memories of Another Day'
This private Facebook group shares memories of 'the colourful history of Reading, Berkshire'. Its members provided anecdotal evidence which proved absolutely invaluable when no other information was available.
Reading Forum
This seemingly now-dead forum provided anecdotal evidence in its posts for the existence of various shops in 2003.
Miscellaneous
This encompasses social media posts, obscure blogs and random websites used for an occasional reference that it did not really seem necessary to include a link to.
Reading Evening Post
Originally a local daily founded in 1965, this dropped the 'Evening' when it switched to weekly publication in 2009. It ceased print publication altogether in 2015, although its online version (see below) continued until 2023.
Miscellaneous
This catch-all category may refer to such publications as national newspapers and/or trade journals.
Reading Chronicle
This is the online version of the Reading Chronicle, a weekly local newspaper originally founded as the Berkshire Chronicle in 1825. It adopted its present name in 1965.
Get Reading / Berkshire Live
This was originally the online version of the Reading Post, a local paper founded as the Reading Evening Post in 1965. It ceased print publication in 2015, after which its online version was renamed Get Reading until 2019, when it was relaunched as Berkshire Live. This too ceased publication in 2023 but, as of 2026, its old posts remain available online via the Surrey Live website.
Reading Today Online
This is the online version of Reading Today, a newspaper launched in 2021 as a sister publication to Wokingham Today (which was itself founded in 2015 to serve Reading's neighbour).
Miscellaneous
This catch-all category may refer to such publications as national newspapers and/or trade journals.
Companies House Register
A business's existence as a limited company doesn't necessarily correspond to its entire duration (sole traders and partnerships exist and businesses may change forms over time), but Companies House records can still identify when a limited company was formed and/or dissolved, where its registered office was and who was running it. All these are potentially useful items of evidence.
Foods Standards Agency
The FSA carries out regular inspections on businesses that prepare and sell foods. The date of the most recent inspection can be found via the FSA website.
Listed Buildings Registers
This includes both national-level listings on the National Heritage List for England and local listings by Reading Borough Council.
Planning Permission Applications
Planning applications aren't a guarantee of occupation by a business - there are several examples of companies getting permission to make alterations and then deciding not to move in - but they are generally indicative. Planning applications since 1988 can be searched via Reading Borough Council's website.
Goad Maps
These detailed street maps show individual buildings and annotate their uses. They are named for Charles Goad (1848-1910) who first created them for fire insurance companies in Canada. He returned to the UK in 1855 and his maps also proved useful here, not only for insurance companies but for commercial estate agents (who love to include them in their material) and those interested in civic history. Reading Central Library has copies of relevant Goad maps for most years between 1974 and present.
Phone Book / Subscriber List
Lists of British telephone subscribers were compiled into directories from 1880, when the Telephone Company (est. 1877) produced its first list for London, until 2024, when BT finally ceased printing its Phone Book. In the earliest days, lists of subscribers were also printed in local newspapers.
Yellow Pages
The Yellow Pages was born out of a logistical issue (a directory printer running out of normal paper) in Wyoming in 1883, but soon caught on as a way to differentiate a commercial directory from a list of private telephone subscribers. Here in the UK, the GPO began printing Yellow Pages from 1966 and the Yellow Pages division of its successor, BT, was based in Reading from the mid-1980s onwards. This was split off BT as Yell in 2001. It ceased printing Yellow Pages directories in 2019, retaining only its online offering Yell. An archive of old Yellow Pages is held by the Royal Berkshire Archives.