This pub is a Grade II listed building, the listing title of which is ‘Main Building of Reading General Station’ and the listing description is as follows: “1865-67, architect Mr Lane (Chief Engineer of the GWR Co). Enlargement and remodelling of I K Brunel's original station of circa 1840. Italianate details. 2 storey symmetrical main building of buff brick from Coalbrookdale with Bath stone dressings, rusticated quoins. 10 bays wide, slight break to centre 4. Frieze, moulded cornice and blocking course, the projecting centre having console brackets to the cornice and the blocking course raised as solid pediment. The ground floor of the centre break has guilloche frieze and panelled pilasters with wreath caps flanking the windows and doorways. Cornices on console brackets over 1st floor windows, with triangular and segmental pediments over those in centre break. Canopy across ground floor. Hipped slate roof, chimneys removed. Pleasant central cupola, which has round headed lights and bracket eaves to pyramidal roof with finial. Canopy extends over ground floor extensions on both sides, about 12 bays to left and 7 to right.”

According to the book mentioned above, the pub “opened in June 1994 following a £500,000 conversion of what had been the … ticket office and administration area” of the railway station. “The name is said to derive from a prize of three golden guineas offered by the GWR in 1904 for naming a record-breaking locomotive.” The pub was “purchased by Fuller’s” who refitted it “during 2016, including the addition of a cellar bar, named Firefly after a locomotive designed by Daniel Gooch, which is said to have been the first to serve Reading.”

We might be able to gain access to view the vaulted Firefly Cellar Bar but this cannot be guaranteed as it is used for private parties.

CAMRA website link: CAMRA/Three Guineas

The Three Guineas featured on the Biscuits and Beer: Daytime Pub Tour of Reading on 16 May 2026.