Earley is a town and civil parish in the English non-administrative county of Berkshire. Along with neighbouring town of Woodley. The Office for National Statistics places Earley within the Reading/Wokingham Urban Area; for the purposes of local government it falls within the Borough of Wokingham, outside the area of Reading Borough Council. The name is sometimes spelt Erleigh or Erlegh.

The suburb consists of a number of smaller areas, including Maiden Erlegh and Lower Earley, and lies some 3 miles (5 km) south and east of the centre of Reading, and some 4 miles (6 km) northwest of Wokingham. It has a population of around 32,000. In 2014, the RG6 postcode area (which is nearly coterminous with the area of the civil parish) was rated one of the most desirable postcode areas to live in England. The main campus of the University of Reading, Whiteknights Park, lies partly in Earley and partly in the borough of Reading.

Evidence of prehistoric man has been found in locations around Earley. For example, a hand axe was found in the railway cutting; flint implements in a garden in Elm Lane; and hand axes in the gardens in Fowler Close and Silverdale Road. Most of these finds are thought to date from the late Paleolithic period.

Traces of flimsy shelters from the Mesolithic were discovered at the site of the old power station at Thames Valley Park in north Earley. Tools from that time have also been found, including a flint blade found in a garden in Silverdale Road. Archaeological evidence for continued human presence during the Bronze Age and Iron Age was also discovered on the site of the Thames Valley Business Park, and Roman remains were found on a building site off Meadow Road.

Earley is mentioned in the Domesday Book as "Herlei", with two main manors: Erleigh St Bartholomew, later known as Erleigh Court; and Erleigh St Nicolas, later Erleigh White Knights. In Domesday Herlei is said to be "held by Osbern Giffard from the King, previously Dunn held it from King Edward in freehold. The value was 100 shillings, later 60 shillings, now £4".

The Erleghs, a family of knightly rank who took their name from the manors, held the manors of St Bartholemew and St Nicolas in the latter part of the 12th century through the 13th century and part of the 14th century. John de Erlegh (or John of Earley) was known as the White Knight, hence the renaming of the manor of Erleigh St Nicolas to Whiteknights. The Whiteknights estate was later owned by the Englefields, from 1606 to 1798, and then by the Marquis of Blandford, later the 5th Duke of Marlborough.

The manor of Maiden Erleigh was formed out of the Manor of Erlegh, as a gift of land by John de Erlegh to Robert de Erlegh in 1368. Later it was transferred to Charles Hide of Abingdon. In 1673 the estate was sold to Valentine Crome, and after many changes of ownership at the end of the 18th century, it belonged to William Matthew Birt, who was Governor General of the Leeward Islands. In 1818 the property passed to the Rt Hon Edward Golding, MP for Downton in Wiltshire. In 1878 it was purchased by John Hargreaves, Master of the South Berks Hunt, who founded a course where hunt and yeomanry (similar to modern hunter chases) races were run. The course extended over an area now covered by Sutcliffe Avenue, Hillside Road and Mill Lane. The grandstand stood on an area opposite Loddon Infant School. The estate was purchased in 1903 by the millionaire Solly Joel, well known in horse racing circles, who had a racecourse on the estate. The racecourse was demolished during the First World War and the grandstand was re-erected at Newbury Racecourse.[7] He donated a piece of his land to the village to be used for sporting purposes: the park and pavilion were opened by the Duke of York, later King George VI, in 1927 and, as Sol Joel Park, the park and the original pavilion are used to this day.

The estate of Bulmershe Court once belonged to the Abbey of Reading. In the 18th century it was the home of Henry Addington, Viscount Sidmouth, Prime Minister. Bulmershe College, which became part of the University of Reading in 1989, occupied this site until 2012. The site of the former Bulmershe College has been redeveloped, principally for housing.

Until 1888, Earley extended westwards from the Three Tuns crossroads down the Wokingham Road and into Reading. To enable this section to be linked into the drainage system, Reading extended its boundaries to the Three Tuns crossroads, and this part of Earley was incorporated into Reading. At that time, the centre of Earley was the crossroads and Saint Peters Church. Even today, some residents living over the boundary in Reading think of themselves as belonging to Earley even though they pay their council tax to Reading Borough Council (at least three businesses along the stretch of Wokingham Road lying within Reading Borough include 'Earley' in their business names). Indeed, this area of Reading Borough still forms part of the ecclesiastical parish of Earley St Peter, which extends as far as, but does not include, Palmer Park.

The University of Reading began as a University College, Reading, in 1892; it became the University of Reading in 1926 and acquired its new site, which straddles the boundary between Earley and Reading, in 1947. Of the six large villas on the estate four were designed by Waterhouse (Erleigh Park 1859, Whiteknights 1868 (now called Old Whiteknights House), Foxhill 1868 and the Wilderness 1873). Waterhouse also designed Reading School (1865-71) in Erleigh Road, in the borough of Reading, extended Pepper Manor, now 'Old School' in Leighton Park School, on Shinfield Road, in 1890, and built Grove House on the north of the school site (1892-94).

Earley grew rapidly both before and after World War II, and was designated a town in 1974. From 1977, the Lower Earley housing estate was constructed by private companies, almost doubling Earley's population to the current level. Two new primary schools were built, together with a large supermarket complex, which opened in 1979, and a sports centre. In 1988 a second shopping area, Maiden Place, opened. An additional secondary school was planned roughly opposite the sports centre next to Rushey Way, possibly on the site next to the police station. However, the school never materialised, and the land was built on.