A Walk Around the Manor Farm Housing Estate, Chalvey

 

 

View of Brammas Close from the main road through Chalvey

 

The Manor Farm housing estate as it looks from the road. As with all the buildings in the next few pictures, there is minimal variation in style, and in the row above none at all– it’s dark brick and white weatherboarding all the way, baby. All the housing in the estate is in terraces, in the background you can see further microcosms of misery extending identically at right angles to each other.

 

There is also minimal differentiation between individual houses, with the cars parked outside being the only visual cues as to who lives where. This ties in perfectly with the ethos of social housing estates– you’re not housing people or families, you’re housing a whole class at once, a class that we’ve been taught doesn’t deserve anything but the most basic of survival kits, almost like refugees in a camp. And yet the austere and minimalist designs were the product of the Modernist movement, which had at its ideological centre the hope that housing could be a great unifier of society, uniting classes together as one.

 

Housing providers of the mid 20th century loved this new idea of communality–provided it was for the lower classes, that is. They were a convenient, expedient way of housing large numbers of disenfranchised people without having to spend too much time or money– perpetually cash-strapped councils were happy, private contractors even more so.  So we had an era of hopeless estates, whose cheap, generic, monotonous designs could be explained away as clean, efficient (but ersatz) Modernism, and whose lack of individuality and forced communality could be spun as an attempt at hippyish unification. But you can bet your boots none of the people who designed these places ever went to live there themselves.

 

Pedestrian access to housing, Manor Farm housing estate, Chalvey

 

The token sections of ‘green’ add nothing to this very basic landscape, they are merely absences of houses on the blueprint. In the nearly fifty years since this estate was built, have the powers that be not seen fit to add a single decent-sized tree? The simple addition of a large, mature tree would have improved this view considerably and broken the monotony of parts of this depressing estate. 

 

 

 

Children’s play area, Manor Farm housing estate, Chalvey

 

Quite why this children’s play area has been sequestered by railings is not evident– it’s in a pedestrian area, so no crazy cars, and is right in the middle of the estate, so no weirdos lurking in the bushes… it ends up giving the psychological impression that, as in all estates, the kids are to be kept in, rather than the dangerous things kept out. 

 

It is a feature of social housing estate design that certain basic provisions are to be robotically included to provide a kind of generic, minimum-quality existence, the kind that ticks the boxes on government’s key performance indicators list and satisfies the health inspector. Adequate light per house, the smallest acceptable front ‘garden’ per home, minimal aesthetic stimulation with no unnecessary variation in housing styles, regulation play-areas to combat ill-health in children… and yet the paternalism of the thinking that made such estates is at odds with the rather patrician attitude that says that social housing shouldn’t be too nice, because it’s for poor people. So we’re allowed a few square metres of breathing space so the kids don’t go insane from boredom, but only if it’s railed off and mediocre– there is such a thing as too much fun, too much freedom, in a housing estate.

 

The small earth hump provides a slight variance from the dull, flat, topography in an area of unchanging elevation, while the logs and boulders are the only reminder of natural, uncontrolled forms in this strictly regulated and ordered landscape. No such efforts at breaking the monotony of the estate exist outside the playground, adults presumably not being worthy– it took the strongest empathy, that for the wellbeing of children, to get it in at all. So enjoy it while you can, kids, because the moment you get too big for the playground such essential forms will be lost to you forever; the only features you’ll see outside it will be controlling features like the concrete pillar on the left, the wall in the foreground, and the inevitable 'no ball games’ sign. Those railings around the playground are just a primer. 

 

 

Childrens play area #2, Manor Farm housing estate, Chalvey

 

A better attempt at a play area than the one we saw in the last post: the absence of railings and the visual accessibility of the ‘entrance’ are immediately more welcoming and optimistic, and the whole space becomes more 'open’ as a result. There’s more interesting topography and yes! more boulders here, plus the kind of wooden climbing frames adventurous little tykes can really get their teeth into. Still, the conclusions of the last post still stand: look at the contrast between the rugged, interesting foreground and the strictly controlled housing strips and forbidding brick wall behind. At what age is the need for fun, visual stimulation and references to nature supposed to end? The imposed conformity of the estate sits uncomfortably with the playground’s admission that humans need stimulation, adventure and chaos in their environments.

 

 

It had to be in there somewhere! It was inevitable… no social housing estate is complete without its mantra: NO BALL GAMES. Yes, you. Are you listening? I said NO BALL GAMES. Graffitti tags underage sex casual drug use gang violence internet porn happy slapping and habitual truancy yes but NO BALL GAMES! 

Of course, it’s also a relic from a distant past when kids played outside instead of on Xbox. Give it another decade and kids will walk past thinking, ‘What’s a ball game??’

 

 

Street sign showing “plan” of Manor Farm housing estate, Chalvey

 

The first time I walked around this housing estate I got lost, and there’s little wonder why– the estate is a maze of identical housing terraces aligned in only two directions with no individual characteristics to distinguish one part from another. It’s also mostly pedestrianized, so there aren’t any obvious roads or streets to navigate by, and there certainly aren’t any identifiable landmarks. Like so many housing estates of the 20th century it has been planned to provide a certain density of housing rather than as a coherent neighbourhood, and as such isn’t particularly user-friendly in either the aesthetic or navigational senses. It lacks focus and a centred identity, and appears clinical and artificial.

 

The difficulties of finding your way around this maze of mirrors are tacitly admitted by the council’s provision of this map by the road-side– never before have I seen a residential area that’s needed a map to make sense of it! And what a map it is. Look closely and you will see that it hardly makes any sense at all, it isn’t even clear which bits are houses. Only the High Street is named, and half of it looks like it hasn’t been finished, with the features simply disappearing into sketches and construction lines. Even the ‘You are here' blob doesn’t seem too sure of itself. It's a typical council map– it leaves you none the wiser, its purpose being to merely exist, not to actually be useful. Well, off you go now, find your way home and, er, good luck.   

 

 

Staggered housing, pretty much facing East head on to fulfil the ol' light specifications.

 

 

View of Brammas Close from Chalvey rec ground

 

A final look at the Manor Farm housing estate, an expression of conformity in social housing from the late 60s. This picture is from the Chalvey recreation ground on the other side of the main road, which consists of a field and this stately basketball court. Alas, the lonely hoopstand looks more like a hangman’s gallows– as if the area needed any more depressing suggestions!

 

‘Chanan House’, corner of High St Chalvey.

 

A distinct Eastern influence on the design of this building near the end of Chalvey’s High Street gives a nod to Slough’s second largest ethnic demographic. With Slough’s Asian population now having been an integral part of Slough for some decades it will be interesting to see if any more Eastern motifs will find their way into the architecture, hopefully in something more inspiring than the fried chicken and kebab shops pictured above (and preferably leaving out the Delhi-style cabling we can see snaking off the front of the building). 'Regeneration’ is in the cards for Chalvey– will the blueprints allow any cultural reflection of the people who live there? Or will it be more bland, generic buildings copy 'n’ pasted from the last development?

Quite a hash has been made of Chalvey’s traffic system, which has become a long-standing gripe of the locals and of anyone trying to pass through and keep their patience at the same time. The confused arrangement of strips, islands and markings shown in the foreground above is but a taste of the chaotic system that sees near-daily traffic jams extend for hundreds of yards up the adjoining Ledger’s Rd. As a result of this poor arrangement, the passage of pedestrians, cycles and cars around this corner has taken on a kind of Darwinian aspect; mothers with prams stare down cars until they can cross, while bikes mount the pavement sending pedestrians whirling, unless they are taken out beforehand by suddenly-opened parked car doors. Rock, paper, scissors.

 

A Walk Around Derelict Chalvey 

 

 

Abandoned shopping complex, Chalvey, Slough.

 

Virtually all the businesses have left this now derelict shopping complex, although a few diehards remain. Like a Wild West set at high noon, old leaves and bits of paper blow around in lonely wind vortices, and you can’t help but predictably hum the first few bars of the Specials’ song Ghost Town. The space is utterly deserted, as no man or creature has any business going there, with only the tumble-trash to remind you that civilisation hasn’t ended. As a result, the area has become totally obsolete as public space.

The faded blue and pink posts, the multi-coloured shopfronts– there was at least once an attempt to introduce some vibrancy to this part of Slough, some optimistic small-business dream, but it has not proved lasting; why, Slough is the home for big business, multinational household brands operating from the trading estate, smartly dressed companies that hire office space by the tens of thousands of cubed feet, not modest local efforts squatting in brown-brick units in Chalvey. At some point this complex will be ‘regenerated’ by the powers that be, but whether the public space and small-business retail provision will survive in the blueprints remains to be seen. 

 

 

 

Modern energy-efficient housing complex, corner of Spackman’s Way and High St Chalvey.

 

Industrial functionalism is referenced in the sawtooth roof, a feature of old factories that employed the design to stop direct sunlight from skylights overheating products on the factory floor. At first glance this would appear to be just another modern architectural skeuomorph– an archaic design feature that no longer has any practical use but is retained for aesthetic reasons– but in this case, the feature is also used as a way of introducing more daylight and saving energy. A hearty dose of nostalgia goes into the mix too, as such roofs were common in buildings from the first half of the 20th century and form part of our industrial imagination of the past. The complex is arranged in short terraces which continue the reference by repeating the roof as you go along, except in this case each ‘tooth’ of the roof corresponds to a single, separate housing unit.

The complex is arranged in a U-shape around a communal garden space and is fenced around the perimeter (rather over-enthusiastically in the section pictured above, with both hedge and railings). Perhaps this desire for exclusivity stems from the buildings’ proud description as 'Zero carbon homes with a variety of renewable energy solutions’; ironically, the complex is situated yards away from Chalvey dump, sorry 'Chalvey Household Waste Recycling Centre’, which, er, offers 'renewable energy solutions’ of its own. Still, I’m sure it smelt good on the blueprint. 

 

Part Worn Tyres, Chalvey

 

Second-hand tyres for sale on Church Street. In the background is The Flags, a 50s bogus-Tudor bar where young men once gathered to talk of sports and makes of cars– now it’s a ‘local erotic dance pub’, aka a tittybar, where you can see part-worn strippers gyrate on stage for a reasonable fee. Appearing tonight are Chanel, Tanya and Toni, if you’re interested.

 

 

Derelict Jackson & Nephew petrol station, Chalvey Rd East, 2014.

 

Nature reclaims unused urban space, poking through the seams in the asphalt, growing up the walls, pooping on the forecourt. This site was last operated by Shell, but has been unused for nearly a decade. Jackson and Nephew had been on the site since the early 30s, initially as a cycle repair business and later as sellers of petrol; in 1979 the old shop was pulled down and this petrol station put in its place. The sign still shows the old 5-digit telephone number.   

In the background stands Tower House, one of the relatively few high-rise blocks in Slough. Both the block and the petrol station site are earmarked for ‘regeneration’, with the latter having been surrounded by new building hoarding just this week. This view will soon change, both far and near.

 

 

 

Cornwall House, High St, Slough

 

A distinctive little octagonal oddity at the end of the High Street. It was built in the early 80s and still displays that period’s penchant for tinted windows. It’s a quirky arrangement of set-back floors arranged in octagonal blocks, all built in a concrete frame, and provides a visual complement to the mildly Brutalist Slough Library building next door. From certain angles the windows reflect other parts of itself, providing a kind of hall-of-mirrors effect that enhances its visual complexity at no extra building cost!

After years as an office it is now being bafflingly redeveloped for residential flats. I worry about who will end up living here, as it’s situated on a thin wedge of land between the continuation of the High Street and the frenetically busy Bath Road– you can see in the pictures how the traffic converges around it. You could put up with this as a workplace– it’s centrally located, easy to get to, and you won’t be spending the night– but as residential accommodation it would be far from ideal. Nothing like the dawn chorus of rush hour to greet you in the morning! Also, in terms of air quality, any location on this part of the Bath Road must fall somewhere between the sulphurous fumes of Hades and Eric Cartman’s farts. Perhaps not the best place for flats?

 

 

A Walk Around Winvale

 

 

Refurbished 60s apartment block, Winvale.

 



Winvale is a small estate of social housing built in the early 60s. It consists of several apartment blocks such as the one pictured and a row of terraced housing. They were built using a concrete panel system that allowed speedy construction (and which is why all the apartment blocks are identical in design). A project to refurbish the apartment buildings was recently completed; before, they were depressing pebbledashed cuboids in a state of decay that even graffiti couldn‘t hurt. The refurbishment added an insulating rendered layer on the outside, replaced all the windows and painted the buildings in various shades of exciting off-white, blue and grey. According to the website of Niblock, the builders who completed the project for Slough Borough Council, Class ‘O’ paint was used in the common areas– this is a special type of paint designed to be fire-resistant. The roofs were originally flat, but now pitched roofs have been added, probably for a combination of aesthetic and insulation reasons. 

 

The end result is surely an improvement for the residents, even if visually it simply looks like a transition from 60s-style social housing back to the 50’s style. The buildings still look appropriately drab and depressing, but a lot of this is due to the design flaws of 60s social housing, when it was still thought prudent to knock up ugly quick-build estates and fill them with needy people in a rush; estates that were designed to be built quickly from mass-produced elements that produced identical buildings, all aesthetically constrained so as not to be too ‘nice’– after all, it is social housing. Can’t be too generous, can we?! As if further evidence were needed for the slightly punitive aspect of social housing, the estate is cornered by the busy Windsor Road and by the mighty M4, which is a matter of yards away and whose din is inescapable.

 

Slough is returning to this style of social housing provision; current plans for a stretch of Windsor Road just round the corner from Winvale involve a series of large, identical apartment blocks that will merely be a 21^st century version of the above estate. Just like the situation in the 60s, foolish housing developments are being rushed through to avert a crisis with little thought spared for the future fabric of the town, a programme of hasty measures when what is needed is a sensible, national and regional strategy that builds for tomorrow, not for yesterday… hang it all, I’m starting to sound like David Cameron. Anyway, to conclude: never learn from your mistakes, you never know when you might need to commit them again.

 

 

Another shot of the refurbished apartment blocks at Winvale.

 

Repetition of style, orientation and even colour scheme in the newly-refurbished estate. Once again the ‘rules’ of estates have been applied: 'basic’ and 'generic’ are the aesthetic guidelines, and the denial of individualism betrays the lack of aspiration, identity and sense of worth that characterises social housing. The lack of private space shows the 'forced communality’ of life in estates: residents’ clothes are hung out to dry inches from the public pavement.

Fun fact: just behind the fence you can see by the furthest block is the M4, one of Britain’s busiest motorways. Enjoy!

 

 

New fence at Winvale, Slough.

 

As part of the mini-estate’s refurbishment, Winvale has been given a perimeter fence. You know you’re going up in the world when you get a fence! Not the grandest of boundaries– the green wire fencing looks like something you pick up at a garden centre– but once the greenery has grown in it should look better (hopefully the fence itself will be removed once the shrubs are established).

I can’t help but wonder if the fence is meant to keep other people out, or Winvale people in; in any case, it is largely cosmetic as everywhere on the other side can be accessed easily from the road. The biggest consequence in terms of trespass, then, is that the local kids can’t play across the path as they used to– a pity, as this was one of the few places in Slough where kids could play outside near to home without being squashed.

 

 

 

‘Chalcott’, apartment building, Windsor Rd.

 

Ladies and gentlemen: a box! A classic example of 60’s low-rise flats. A combination of modernism and Scandinavian minimalism give us the style: little in the way of ornamentation, perfect symmetry and a design dictated by geometric order. Notice how the windows on the left 'reflect’ those on the right from a central line of symmetry, rather than just having the same window twelve times. Modernism had done away with the classic roof, so no passe gables or pitched roofs here, and no chimney– by the early sixties it was expected that new housing would automatically come with central heating, doing away with the chimney stack forever. This left the architect with the possibility of a perfect cuboid, which would have looked refreshingly radical when first built, but alas! the novelty wore off pretty quickly. 

There is no embellishment in the brickwork at all, and the only concession to superfluous ornament is the minimal white weatherboarding at the top; this classic combination of red brick and white weatherboarding would come to characterize lazily designed, generally crap housing from the sixties and seventies (for examples, see, er, everywhere). This example just about gets away with it by sticking to its theme of purity by simplicity and symmetry (if you’re going to be a box, then be a box, dammit!), and also because it’s really small; make it seven storeys tall or twice as wide, and you’ve got an eyesore. It’s the only building in this style on this road, so it again escapes censure by being something of an oddity; an estate full of these would be mind-numbing, but the odd one adds to the diversity of housing stock, not just in style but in provision–apartments don’t need to come in seven storey mountain blocks!  

‘The Urban Building’, corner of Windsor Rd and Albert St.

 

Formerly occupied by some very dingy 60s office blocks, this site now hosts a new office development trendily named 'The Urban Building’ (you can just about see its name in white letters right at the top of the building). Annoying, generic, common noun names seem to be in vogue at the moment– we already have 'The Curve’, 'The Centre’ and 'The Foyer’ in town, and the previous owners of this building advertised it simply as '123 Windsor Rd’. Quite why the owners opted for such unassuming names is strange, as the building itself is anything but: eight storeys and a wide frontage set right onto the road is as in-yer-face as you can get.
 

The building is young, under ten years old, and is therefore 'contemporary’– this can mean only one thing: glass, glass, glass, baby. We are confronted with a wall of glass, stretching up like the vertical water at Niagara Falls, glass along the sides, glass behind the portico. Light aquamarine panelling alternates with the glass, completing the illusion of a blue sky reflection even if the weather doesn’t comply. A nod to structural expressionism gives us the mesh-wrapped fire-escape stairs on the left hand corner and external metal support girders, while the steel-flap eaves at the top are reminiscent of industrial chic– warehouses, airports, factories. The 'columns’ (poles, really) provide a visual, structural aesthetic but not much else, the portico not being wide enough to casually walk down; perhaps a smoke-breaker from the offices within could huddle against the cold there, but not much else.
 

The drawback to the grid pattern of glass and panelling, in that particular greenish shade, is that the whole frontage looks like a piece of graph-paper or, for us kids of the 80s, the light green lined 'computer paper’ we used to use for scribbling at school. It evokes the paraphernalia and dull practice of office-work: spreadsheets, accounting, graphs, figures. The pleasing colour cannot save it from being another office-drudgery-building as generic as its name. Its overall message seems to be 'Back to work Jenkins, that’s enough daydreaming’. It’s trying so hard to be cool and sober for Business People and Business Practice that it’s forgotten to be any fun, and remains professional, but cold and clinical. Work should be prestigious and precise, but never too much fun, it seems.
 

Is it an improvement on what was there before? Certainly. Is it oversized and overbearing for its site? Certainly. One of Slough’s finest churches and churchyard is directly next door (the dramatic Victorian-Gothic St Mary’s), and some also-listed buildings at Upton Hospital a few paces up from that, but little attention was paid them– this very large glass rectangle was dropped in by a mouse-click nonetheless to appease the office-god. But this merely continues a proud Slough tradition, as the buildings it replaces were equally at odds with the neighbours.
 

Locals complain that the bloody thing is often lit up like a Christmas Tree at night, while during the day it appears dead and dormant; to my knowledge, there hasn’t been a single company renting space in it since the day it was built. Like Slough Borough Council it is expecting a kind of miracle of business growth to occur after the Crossrail transport project is finished, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Slough has a loooot of offices to choose from these days.
 

UPDATE: The building is no longer empty! KP Snacks are to move in and a café is to open on the ground floor, possibly even open to the public.

 

Apartment building in Arborfield Close, off Windsor Rd.

 

If the picture looks grey and dingy, that’s because Slough usually is…

This was built around the late seventies but could pass for twenty years earlier– there are even echoes of the humourless, rationed late thirties/forties style here. In particular, the un-rendered bare brown brick finish gives it an uncompromising fifties’ prison look. Divided window panes and an attempt at breaking up the monotony of the shape by adding extra angles aren’t enough to prevent this from being a rather despondent view at the end of a cul-de-sac. It is predictability that breeds monotony, and although it has asymmetry in its basic shape the lack of variation in window size and layout reminds you that you are in grim Conformaland. Greenery consists of a few antisocial shrubs looking for a place to die. How about a landmark-size tree, or a bench, or some more interesting lighting? An opportunity to put some accessible public space before the building was missed, leaving us with a drive-right-up utilitarian feel to the building, and to the whole close as well. A precursor of the ‘mountain-block’ development we saw in the previous post.

 

New multi-storey residential housing complex on Windsor Rd, on the corner of Chalvey Rd East– great if you love living by a main road! This was one of the first of a new generation of ‘mountain blocks’ that has been built in Slough in a hurried answer to its housing shortage: massive, looming, multi-storey buildings characterised by minimal variation in unit style, rather hostile looking steel balconies that do not offer much space, unimaginative and unvariating window size and distribution, minimal breathing space for the pedestrian passer-by and a general lack of warmth in design. The accusation of it being a 'tower block’ has been averted by the use of asymmetry, which in the above case saves the building from being too foreboding; however, its sheer bulk, particularly in relation to other buildings nearby, makes it unwelcomingly imposing– certainly it dominates the view looking up Windsor Rd from lower down the hill. Some effort has at least been made to incorporate the shape of the rounded corner, and the retention of trees of varying types provides a bit of a fig-leaf, although with the building’s sheer size they look more like shrubs outside a house. The end result is more mountain range than building, with the effect of dwarfing and barricading the neighbour, whose local skyline it now defines.   

Previously the site was occupied by a fairly stately if rather drab Victorian building called Denmark House, which in later years was used for offices by the District Council. The corner was also likely the location for the Arbour Hill Pond, which was used as a watering-spot for horses on their way through to what was then the sleepy village of Chalvey. As you can see the curved Victorian wall around the perimeter still remains, possibly rebuilt in stretches, but with the original character retained.

The former O2 office building at 1 Brunel Way, right next to Slough Station. For people arriving at Slough it is the first building they see on leaving the station, and what a welcome! There’s nothing like a filthy, rotting, abandoned office complex to announce, to any who had hoped to evade the reality, that you are now in Slough. With its central stairs and setback floor levels, all covered in mould and weeds, it looks like an Indiana Jones-esque forgotten jungle temple built by an extinct civilisation; as it happens, Segro (owners of Slough Trading Estate) owned the building and O2, the god this temple was dedicated to, is now based in more salubrious quarters along the Bath Road. If you look carefully you can still see the neon O2 sign in the centre of the building that used to light up in electric blue each night. Even more cynically, in the foreground you can see a banner advert for, er, O2.

The building is currently in the process of being demolished as part of Slough Borough Council’s ‘Regeneration’ project. It is to be replaced, of course, by another office complex. Let’s hope that whatever follows provides a more charming introduction to the town for visitors stepping off the train.

 

View looking North up Windsor Road, from a 1950’s postcard. Observatory House was the residence of Slough’s most famous resident, the astronomer William Herschel, who discovered Uranus in 1781; the house was demolished in the enlightened 60’s in order to make way for all-important office space. The old Granada Cinema can be seen on the left, this too bit the dust for offices. The Baptist Church and a few of the Edwardian buildings further up on the left side remain, as does the curved Prudential building you can see at the end of the road.