Whiteknights Park

Whiteknights Park, or the Whiteknights Campus of the University of Reading, is the principal campus of that university. The park covers the area of the manor of Earley Whiteknights, also known as Earley St Nicholas and Earley Regis.

Whiteknights Park is some two miles south of the centre of the town of Reading in the English county of Berkshire. The campus is 1.3 square kilometres (321 acres) in size and includes lakes, conservation meadows and woodlands as well as being home to most of the university's academic departments and several halls of residence.

The site was the home of John De Erleigh II, the famous foster-son of the Regent of England, William Marshal, but takes its name from the nickname of his great grandson, the 13th-century knight, John De Erleigh IV, the 'White Knight'. The De Erleigh (or D'Earley) family were owners of this manor for some two hundred years before 1365. St. Thomas Cantilupe, Bishop of Hereford and advisor to King Edward I, was allowed to live there briefly during the 1270s. In 1606 the estate was purchased by the nephew of Sir Francis Englefield, following the confiscation of Englefield House and its estates in 1585. The Englefield family in turn sold the estate to George Spencer-Churchill, the Marquis of Blandford, in 1798.

Between 1798 and 1819, the estate was the scene of vast extravagance and wild entertainments, all at the Marquis' expense. Splendid gardens were laid out, complete with the rarest of plants. In 1819, George Spencer, by now the Duke of Marlborough, became bankrupt and moved to his family home at Blenheim Palace at in Oxfordshire.

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