and the Bull tap house adjacent is now owned by Wadworth Brewery. Local competition in the village before the Second World War came from H & G Simonds Brewery of Reading which owned the Falcon and the Bridge House Inn by the canal, and from Strange's Brewery at Aldermaston Wharf, which owned the Crown and the White Hart. The street name, Blatch's Close, commemorates the firm. Pincents Kiln Theale was once involved in Tilehurst's tile industry; until at least the late 19th century there was a kiln to the north-east of the village. Pincents Kiln exploited the proximity of chalk to a pocket of clay to make lime cement as well as bricks and tiles. The site is now a business park to the east of the M4. Some of the buildings in the High Street have old tiled roofs. Gravel Gravel extraction was confined to small pits on the exposed gravel terrace of the village until the arrival of the railway. A large pit was opened in 1887 in the west of the village, with a railway spur. This pit was deep enough to flood as a lake, but subsequent work proceeding westwards down the Bath Road involved shallow stripping of the gravel above the water table. The Theale and Great Western Sand and Gravel Co was incorporated as a limited company in 1928, and was taken over by the Wraysbury Sand and Gravel Co in 1955. The rail-served Theale Aggregate Depot on Wigmore Lane remains in operation, although the material comes from other sources. The gravel under the alluvium of the river valley was massively exploited after the Second World War, with a peak of activity in the 1950s, with intensive gravel extraction along the River Kennet, which created a series of huge pits south of the railway, four miles long from south of the A340 junction to the railway to Basingstoke. These filled up with water after exhaustion, and became a series of large lakes. There is no extractive activity in the parish now. The Old Gravel Pit in the village was already attracting the attention of birdwatchers by 1935. The flooded workings attracted much bird life, including rarities, and became nationally famous as a birdwatching destination. The Theale cluster comprised the Wigmore Lane Gravel Pits, Bottom Lane Gravel Pits, Hosehill Pit, Theale Main Pit and Arrow Head Pit. In 1988, the Theale Area Bird Conservation Group