Elected county councils were created in 1889 under the Local Government Act 1888, taking over many administrative functions that had previously been performed by unelected magistrates at the quarter sessions.

In Berkshire's case, Reading was made a county borough, and the urban sanitary districts of Abingdon and Oxford had straddled the county boundary prior to 1889; Abingdon was placed entirely in Berkshire and Oxford was placed entirely in Oxfordshire.

The Banham Review recommended abolishing Berkshire County Council and having the county administered by five unitary authorities, based on the pre-existing districts but merging Bracknell Forest and Windsor and Maidenhead into a single district.

CRAG successfully opposed Wokingham Borough Council's plan for building houses between Reading and Basingstoke (to create a conurbation dubbed 'Readingstoke').

[14][15] Berkshire County Council established its meeting place in the Assize Courts on The Forbury in Reading.

In 1911 the council built itself a dedicated office building called Shire Hall immediately west of the Assizes Courts.

[20] Political control of the county council from the reforms of 1974 until its abolition in 1998 was as follows:[21][22] Most councillors stood as independent candidates prior to 1974, and party affiliations were not given on ballot papers until 1970.

Despite this win, Labour were still a minority and party politics did not meaningfully come into play on the county council until after the 1974 reforms.

The following table lists the chairmen of the old Berkshire County Council from 1889 to 1974:[26] Councillors were generally elected without a party affiliation, although two of the chairmen (William George Mount and Arthur Loyd) had been Conservative MPs prior to becoming chairman.

The stag and oak are assumed to represent the county's forests and the popularity of hunting in the area amongst Saxon and Norman kings.

The red lion carries a Tudor rose as a symbol of the county's royal connections.

The white horse represents the Uffington White Horse, and carries a symbol known in heraldry as a "pile", being a punning reference to the atomic pile at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell.

The black horse carries a six-pointed star representing the six districts of the post-1974 county and Slough's role in the history of astronomy as the location of William and Caroline Herschel's observatory in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.