A Look at Hencroft Street

 

Hencroft Street South

 

An example of a decent street in Slough. Housing stock of varying age and size gives the street character and diversity– there are Victorian semi-detached cottage homes, tall turn-of-the-century quadruple-deckers (including basement apartments), large family-size semis from the 1930s and low-rise buildings from the 60s and 80s divided into flats. Housing of differing ages gives the street a sense of evolving heritage, anchored in the past but with familiar touches of modernity, while the differing house size and stock allows for a diversity of residents– families in the houses, couples or individuals in the apartments; one block further down the street is used mostly for elderly housing. Also, it’s not all residential– the building at the end of the street is a small business (and there are more round the corner).

 

This diversity of housing stock gives you an optimum population density– not too high, as in the estates where large, multi-occupancy high rises stand shoulder to shoulder without breathing space, and not too low, as in the space-eating suburbs– and ensures that no single demographic dominates. The signs tell us that housing here can be either  bought or rented, further widening the fiscal criteria for living here. Also, the street isn’t static: you can see some white hoarding on the left-hand side, evidence of continuing building and refurbishment.

 

Street parking is confined to one side of the road only, freeing up space and making the street more pedestrian-friendly. Many of the houses are set back from the street a little, allowing light and space into the domain but also providing a layer of privacy between the residents and the pedestrians passing on the pavement. A decent dose of greenery, including mature trees and unrestrained bushes adds to the character and appeal of the street, which is of a medium length (a little over 200 metres). It is a cul-de-sac for cars but allows pedestrians to access the adjoining street at the top of the street (not in the picture)– thus eliminating noisy through-traffic without harming the pedestrian’s progress.

 

Finally, the gabled late Victorian building at the end, haloed by trees, presents the viewer with an aesthetically pleasing conclusion to the street– compare this with the depressing, never-ending strips of identical housing stretching to the vanishing point found in other parts of Slough, only leading on to more of the same, and without any shred of greenery. It may seem unremarkable, but this street is the kind of thing we envision when we think of words like ‘neighbourhood’ or ‘residential area’ or ‘the street where I grew up’ etc. Why then, have so many streets devolved from this desirable state, and why don’t more developments emulate it?

 

 

A Walk Around Old Upton, Part 2

 

 

 

Victoria Street

 

As the name would suggest, this is a Victorian street that still retains houses of that era on one side (the other side consists of newer buildings and previously cleared, un-redeveloped land). This is what much of Slough, particularly the central part, looked like up until the 1960s, when the town lost most of its Victorian character in a frenzy of demolition and dubious redevelopment that saw Slough lose many fine old buildings, including William Herschel’s historic Observatory House (philistines!). Consequently the town centre lost its overall Victorian identity and has wandered along without much of a defining character ever since, with merciless and uncherishable new developments sitting awkwardly alongside the remains of yesteryear in ever more awkward juxtapositions.

 

This erasure of Slough’s history and tradition is one of the reasons the place feels so lost culturally, an identity-vacancy that was filled by stereotypes of dull offices and boring warehouses simply because there were now more of those than anything else, so that’s what came to define the whole town. Overall, a lack of reverence for the heritage of the past has extended to a lack of consideration for the present; the reigning mantra, that Slough doesn’t really deserve nice things simply because it’s uurgh, “Slough” (from the old English, “a place of mire”), is part of the mindset that has developed Slough to be functional but not charming, industrially impressive but soulless, glass and steel but no warm vernacular materials. It’s like getting a new toothbrush for Christmas: Yeah sure, you’ll eventually need one, but you can’t help feeling like you’ve been gypped.

 

 

Alpha Street South

 

A terrace of petite early Victorian houses on the West side of Alpha Street South, of what the local historian Maxwell Fraser described as “plain but pleasing proportions”, although this row was built early enough to have not been “disfigured by bow windows” (that craze arriving in the later Victorian period). Without the bow window projections the front doors pretty much open straight out onto the pavement, with the stumpy little walls being added in later years to provide a miniscule buffer to the prying eyes of the street; there isn’t even enough room for the usual porch addition.

 

If these front garden proportions seem stingy and ungenerous today, remember that when these houses were built there was literally nothing but open fields surrounding them. In a description of Slough in 1830, a local Victorian writer recalled that “A little beyond where Alpha St now is was the stile from the Church path, all fields then to the end of the lane belonging to Upton farm”. Stiles, farms, fields? Seems unthinkable when you look around the area today. Light, space, traffic and overdevelopment were certainly not issues then. And yet the era wasn’t faultless– even with all that space and possibility, houses for workers were still tiny, and in many cases such as these, crushed together in a ruthless economy of space; moving in when they were first built would have felt like sitting next to the only other person in the cinema. Er, awkward!

 

 

A Walk Around Old Upton, Part 1

 

 

 

Herschel Arms pub, Herschel Street

 

Named after Slough’s most famous resident, the Herschel Arms is one of the last few Victorian pubs still going in Slough, and one that has retained some of its 19^th Century character inside as well as out (unlike so many old pubs that have gutted their insides in favour of parquet flooring, strip lighting and Ikea-esque furniture- looking at you, Three Tuns). The Herschel Arms was built in the 1850s and licensed as a pub in 1864, meaning that it now has a good innings of 150 years of boozing under its belt. It’s old spots like these, combining heritage with public accessibility, that make the older parts of Slough more interesting places than the 20^th century developments; Upton still has a group of Victorian pubs still in operation within five minutes’ walk of each other, while the Manor Park and Baylis areas of Slough, built mostly between the late 1920s and late 1930s, house a good proportion of Slough’s residents and have nary a single pub between them, and are consequently duller places for it. No one in the free world should have to go that far for a drink!

 

 

Early Victorian terrace, Park Street

 

This short terrace down Park street (just off from the High Street) bears a plaque dated 1832, making it just about Georgian with a few hints of the Regency style mixed in, mainly in those arched doorways and fanlight windows. Short terraces like this have a certain vintage charm, if maintained well; they don’t overstay their welcome in size and add a bit of historical variety. Certainly if you did them up, ditched the wheelie bins and satellite dishes, added a bit of climbing greenery and restored the little gardens the houses would be worth a bomb; if the row was in the ‘Golden Triangle’ in Windsor, you could easily get close to a million for each.

 

Another telling relic of the age is the incorporation of mixed uses, with the centre four houses being residential and the ends converted for use as little businesses. In this case, both are actually hairdressers, with the great Sabino having been present here for almost fifty years, still advertised with the ol’ traditional blood ‘n’ bandages pole. Sadly, the newer developments in Slough don’t allow for mixed usage much (everyone’s just supposed to go down the road to Walmart Asda), and are consequently colder and duller places for it; if a neighbourhood is to stay vibrant, then it needs to have Places For People To Go To within it– groceries, cafes, hairdressers, newsagents and, dare I say, the odd pub.

 

 

Housing along Osborne Street, Upton

 

This interesting little development was built in the 1980s on the site of a 19^th century dairy and gives an understated example of what can be done when ‘upgrading’ urban areas. The distinctive design takes in two-sided gambrel roofs inspired by old Dutch (and later rural American) buildings, Tuscan-style windows with ornate grills (they are not apartment windows, but rather look onto an internal courtyard), while the brick corbels and “quoins” (not true quoins, but rather quoin shapes marked out by rendered ‘teeth’) are nods to the Victorian buildings in the adjoining streets. Even the hung tiles on the roof is a nod to the drabber side of Slough’s vernacular.

 

Is it a terrace? The buildings are stuck together, but by staggering their projection onto the street they present the illusion of separate buildings; depth is used to break up the terrace’s usual predictable monotony. A splash of greenery, a modest tree and a classic-design lamp-post also lend a bit of charm, even if the hedges are over-zealously trimmed into pointless cubes; shame about the ugly parking meter, but hey-ho can’t win ’em all. Although parking has been allocated on this side of the street, the layout of the development is such that residents actually park in a small courtyard within, hidden from sight from the street (and also affording their cars a little extra security)– finally, a development that has seriously tried to account for cars rather than just bunging them outside the front door, and over the pedestrian pavement. So that’s three storeys of interestingly-designed apartment housing with self-contained parking and room for some (if overly manicured) greenery, all on a modestly-sized space. See, it can be done!

 

 

 

WHEN I FUCK YOU YOU STAY FUCKED, alley wall, Upton

 

Some rather less than life-affirming graffiti tucked away in this alleyway. Recently daubed.

 

Upton Alleyways

 

 

 

Alleyway, Upton

 

Alleyways such as this one in Upton are some of the oldest routes in town, with some of the surrounding housing dating back to at least the 1830s, and while trawling through local history books you’ll find that some even have names. These days they function primarily as handy, if less than salubrious, short-cuts which can shave a good five or six minutes off your journey time across certain routes. They are also public spaces, sheltered not only from traffic and noise but also from sight– little wonder then, that they now enjoy a reputation for muggers, molesters, druggies and street-pissers (the tell-tale signs of which, that particular green moss, are evident all the way up in this shot).

 

So is there any use these days for fetid, graffiti-tagged, piss-soaked, dangerous thoroughfares? Most modern estates eschew them altogether, either by twisting every street-strand round so that they eventually share a pavement, or by simply having all pedestrian paths follow the car-oriented road route, or by simply writing off the pedestrian’s needs completely– just walk round the whole block, lazy-o! Healthier, wider and better-maintained routes will increase the footfall which should in turn decrease the naughty behaviour, but the larger facts– the lack of alternative public space, the feeling of exposure everywhere in the urban realm, the urban anticipation of crime– will remain, and until then alleyways will continue to be avoided by young women walking at night, old people on pension day, people with sensitive noses and anybody of a nervous disposition generally.

 

 

A Walk Around the Wellesley Road Estate

 

 

View down Wellesley Road, looking West

 

Here we see the beginnings of the grim process by which Slough became so charmless a town to look at. The houses in this stretch of Wellesley Road were built between 1927 and 1928 by a builder who would go on to build identically-dull roads immediately afterwards in the Baylis area of Slough. The terrace is seemingly unending, with all the houses identical in size and design– no variation at all. Greenery is pretty much non-existent, a far cry from the fields and allotments that stretched here when the road was laid. But the rapidly expanding Slough of the 20s needed houses, and after the council had advertised the land for a couple of years a Mr Henry Heath took the chance to build an estate of over a hundred houses on this road and the adjoining Richmond Crescent.

 

By all accounts they were snapped up fairly quickly at the time and had an average of four occupants in each house. Some people had already moved in before the road was even finished, and the Slough Observer of the time reports the disgruntlement of locals over the state of the road, which had been churned into Flanders-esque mud by construction vehicles including an “exceptionally heavy traction engine with four trucks, each fully laden, which passes over the road three or four times a day”. Complaints were also made about the street being poorly lit at night, with the empty houses being a convenient place for “the criminally-intent to lie in wait for victims”. The council couldn’t do much about it however, as at the time this was a private road, and therefore not under their jurisdiction. Whoever said only council houses were dull?

 

 

A closer look at some of the houses along Wellesley Road.

 

This small estate of speculative housing, designed and built for working-class owners, was built in 1927 and is a repetition of the exact same design over and over again in a terrace. The slightly jerry-built-looking design is essentially that of a stripped-down Victorian terrace (but without the charm)– no front gables or dormers, continuous pitched roof punctuated by chimneys, stingy front garden ‘guarded’ by a stout brick wall, barely-adorned entrance and bay window at the front, except here the bay window has become a cynical, squared, cheap-looking addition, added to impress the lower class buyer while costing the builder the absolute minimum in design and construction costs. Certainly the awkward, knobbled, filth-collecting little ‘eaves’ above the window-panes haven’t lasted particularly well. But such is the mystical power of the bay-window: it would continue to impress punters and denote class aspirations for at least another couple of decades.

 

Unlike its bare-brick Victorian forebears, this terrace has been finished in rough, uneven pebbledash from head to toe– a worrying sign for an estate that was completed suspiciously quickly, as this was often a way of concealing shoddy brickwork underneath. The individual houses are quite small, another characteristic of speculative building at the time– although twenties’ house design was informed by a set of recommended standards (published by government in the Tudor Walters Report of 1919) what increasingly happened was the preferred layout of the houses was adopted while the overall size was reduced– little houses for little people. In this case however, the size and plan appears to have been unchanged from the concise proportions of the Victorian terrace (Report? What report?!). However, even these modest terraces would have been new once, and were no doubt cherished by that first slightly-upwardly-mobile generation; alas, time has decidedly worn the novelty off.

 

 

Looking East down Richmond Crescent

 

Following on from the last two posts, we find the same style of housing mercilessly replicated in Richmond Crescent, part of the Wellesley Road estate built in the late 20s. Readers who thought I was being a little harsh on this housing will start to see why; copy-n-pasted over and over again, any style of housing will start to get tedious. 

 

We can also see the impact of that other enemy of urban aesthetics– the car. When this crescent was built, who would have envisioned a time when most houses would have a car (and in many cases two or three)? Their most damaging effect on residential areas, other than cluttering the street, has been the complete eradication of the front garden, that stalwart of British domicile design. All trace of greenery and garden has been concreted over giving the street a joyless, functual feel that makes for an uninspiring environment. Looking for nature has become like a game of ‘Where’s Wally?’–nothing, nothing, nothing, wait there he is! Hiding behind those wheelie bins on the left!

 

As a result of the automobile invasion, the entire visual public and private space, between one row of houses and the other, is dominated and designed purely for cars. It even feels weird walking down streets like these, as the pedestrian pavement has been similarly taken over by the auto-bots; it is guaranteed that at some point you will have to dart out of the way of a car blindly backing out or turning in. Poorly-aged estates like this are visually cynical; whatever pride and personality your home and neighbourhood has takes place indoors– outside is just for parking.

 

A Walk by the Great Western Mainline

 

 

 

Evening shot looking West along the Great Western Main Line

 

It was the railways that brought industry to Slough, and many industrial buildings old and new still stretch along its route. The Horlicks factory, seen here with its turreted tower and stack in silhouette, was built there specifically so that it could have access to the railway; a separate little line used to divert from the bridge where this shot was taken and travel over to the South side of the factory so that Horlicks could load up on its own doorstep.

 

This is what many of the older industrial parts of Slough look like outside of the Trading Estate, mostly modestly sized buildings of differing age clumped together offering physical services; while the rest of Slough is all glass and steel offices, call centres and dull people talking about digital platforms, along the railway you find scrap yards, recycling centres, auto sheds, chemical plants and gasworks, throwbacks to the time in Slough’s history when people called it ‘industry’ instead of ‘business’– an irony, as most of the lifeless, stultifying office-based ‘businesses’ are hardly ‘busy’ at all, at least in any sense that would make you break into a sweat.

 

 

Pedestrian tunnel under the Great Western Main Line, taken from the top of Salt Hill Park

 

This Victorian shortcut under the rail lines is as old as the railway itself and connects Salt Hill Park with the bottom of Baylis Park. Shortcuts like these are handy and interesting little routes for the urban explorer and add character to the setting. Its charm comes not only from the history of the route but also the fact that it serves as a pedestrian space, meaning that for once in Slough you can cross something without having to share the way with noisy, psycho traffic.

 

This charm is, however, contingent on the route being well maintained and safe; in recent years the tunnel became a bit of a troublespot for litter, graffiti, gangs of teenagers and the kind of sinister, lurking weirdos that give parks a bad name after dark. A few licks of paint have gone some way to making the tunnel a bit more user-friendly, and extra measures have been taken for security– in the past, this might have meant a bobby strolling down every night, but these days it means that the council have simply added a menacing CCTV pole a few yards away from the entrance.

 

 

Simpson Skip & Grab Hire, by the railway tracks

 

Pictured from Salt Hill Park on the other side of the rail lines, this is Slough’s version of Edward Hopper’s House by the Railroad. As discussed in the last post, this is an example of the kind of prosaic, physical industry you typically find by the rail-side, as opposed to the modern, office-based businesses you find elsewhere in Slough– a consequence of the historical need for heavy-lifting, physical industries to be near the railways to make transportation easier, and the fact that land situated right next to the tracks is deemed undesirable for the kind of image-conscious companies that demand ever more prestigious-looking office buildings. This is the kind of earthy, unglamorous industry that Slough was built on– factories, plants, depots, scrap yards– before the change to office-based businesses that started in the 60s and really took off in the 80s and 90s, and that still dominates today. Say what you like about the smell, but there’s a kind of refreshingly frank honesty about places like this.

 

A Look at the Horlicks Factory

 

 

Horlicks factory building, seen from the Stoke Poges Lane bridge

 

Certainly the best of the old industrial buildings in Slough, the Horlicks factory was opened in 1908 on a wheat-field originally owned by Eton College and in a position that would give it easy access to the railway lines. The project began in 1906 but the building could pass for an earlier, Victorian project; red brick, gently arched windows, some light gothic going on in the tower, with its corner turrets and crenellations, and then of course there’s the stack, that mighty symbol of 19^th Century industrialism. The clock, however, is certainly looking more art-deco. The building is much loved and recognised locally and is locally listed. Other than the stack the most distinctive feature is the Horlicks sign, which usually lights up at night and can’t be missed if you’re passing by on the train.

 

The picture was taken in 2014 from the Stoke Poges Lane, which as you can see in the foreground with its bulky rivets and peeling paint, was certainly a contender for Industrial Grunge object of the year; it has since been reconstructed to accommodate the impending Crossrail rail augmentation project.

 

 

Another shot of the Horlicks factory, seen from Stoke Poges Lane

 

In 1909, the year after the factory was opened, an artesian well was dug on the grounds to provide fresh water. It ended up being drilled over a thousand feet deep and at one point was yielding water at a rate of over 90,000 gallons of water per hour; one local’s account described the water as flowing down the Stoke Poges Lane ‘like a small river’ before it was tapped. The water obtained was found to be ‘exceedingly pure’ and is testament to the quality of Slough’s chalk-filtered water. To think, Slough was once salubrious!

 

Contrary to popular belief, the Horlicks drink is actually British, developed by the Horlick brothers in the 1880s but originally produced at a factory in Wisconsin, USA; later, when the drink took off in Britain the Slough factory was built to supply the country and to export further abroad. The building is currently owned and used by the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, whose happy gifts to heritage include the CCTV post and the savage iron security railings.

 

 

Derelict Victorian house in foreground, new multi-storey apartment block in background, taken from Mill Street

 

Grey is never a good colour for buildings in Slough, and this picture shows why. So many modern architects assume bright blue skies will forever illuminate their works as it does in their CGI brochures, but reality rarely obliges, at least in Slough. Also, it’s another consequence of developers not fully considering the surrounding environment of their projects, either meteorologically or architecturally, with the 15-storey ‘Lexington’ building in the background being about as sympathetic as an abattoir to the local skyline.

 

We also get an apt visual juxtaposition of the two Sloughs that are emerging (as discussed in the last few posts): the grounded, low-rise low-class population in urgent need of a new set of clothes and a makeover, and the affluent outsiders, invited in to occupy tall buildings full of luxury apartments at night, commuting to the capital from the nearby station by day, and never threatening to actually become a part of Slough’s reality.

 

 

PS: That house looks like it’s actually been hit by a friendly bomb or two!

 

A Walk Around the New Developments on Railway Terrace, Part 2

 

 

 

‘Rivington’ apartment building, Railway Terrace 

 

Taken from ground-level, it only needs a tilt of the head to turn the side of this new block into a Kafka-esque vision of modernity endlessly collapsing in on itself [*slap* get a hold of yourself!].

The building somehow has a conforming, bureaucratic feel about it that seems to evoke modern council offices rather than residential units, and the terracotta cladding doesn’t provide the warmth one associates with the medium, mainly because it has been squared off, smoothed over and cleaned up too much, arranged into a precise grid around precise, humourless windows– it’s less terracotta warrior, more terracotta spreadsheet.

 

Perhaps the best thing one can say about it is that it isn’t as intrusive as its neighbours, particularly the ‘Lexington’, its sister-building directly next door, which is at least twice its height. Marketing pictures of the inside of them show open-plan apartments in ‘neutral’ colours, wall-to-wall laminate flooring, evenly-spaced down-lighting for that showroom feel, and oodles of Scandinavian-inspired furniture; it’s like the occupants have died and gone to a cold, soulless Ikea heaven. It’s the perfect habitat for the moneyed, mobile yet ennui-ed and culturally-insecure commuter-belt crony. Teriyaki dinner at six, homemade Tanqueray cocktails at seven, widescreen plasma tv sports at eight, joyless safe sex at nine, power shower and contemplated bathroom suicide at ten; up at seven for commute, repeat as necessary.

 

 

Corner turret of ‘The Junction’ apartment building, Railway Terrace

 

A rare bit of eccentricity in one of the new, multi-storey apartment complexes behind the station (you can see the building on the far left in this post ). No prizes for guessing what this feature is supposed to evoke: they do say an Englishman’s home is his, er...

 

One would think that the only interesting feature of this dull building would be prominently placed, but it isn’t, in fact it is tucked away in the crawl space between this building and its close neighbour the ‘Rivington’; this just contributes to the suspicion that it somehow got into the blueprint by accident. Eccentricity just isn’t charming if it’s hidden.

 

This project was completed by Barratt Homes, whose name has long been mocked as a kind of hallmark of mediocrity, so it was surprising to see the feature there at all. It’s a shame then that the rest of the building doesn’t contain any more visual wit, as the block as a whole is just another generic, uninspired mass that’s not too distinguishable from the dire Holiday Inn building a few blocks over; at least they’re keeping to a consistent character, I suppose, even if it’s a poor one.

 

 

Upwards view of the corner turret of ‘The Junction’ apartment building

 

Like so many new developments in Slough, this building has been christened with a generic common noun in a trite attempt to make it seem cool and exclusive (we already have ‘The Curve’, ‘The Centre’, ‘The Urban Building’, ‘The Foyer’ etc); in this case, it’s ‘The Junction’, which just makes it sound like a troublespot on the M4. Quite what it’s a junction between isn’t clear– its use as commuter bait makes it a terminus, its inclusion at the end of a row of such buildings makes it an adjunct, its hulking form greeting people stepping off the trains at its foot makes it an introduction, but not a junction.

 

The idea is presumably to acknowledge the developers’ wish that it be used a junction between London, where the commuters work, and Windsor, where they would like to pretend they live. Much of the marketing material that comes with the Railway Terrace developments is overly-emphatic on Slough’s proximity to Windsor: Windsor sites are namedropped as leisure activities, Windsor shops, pubs and restaurants are proffered as the prospective resident’s cultural options. Don’t worry, just a few minutes to Windsor!

 

Strangely enough, not as much mention is made of Slough as these are mostly luxury flats (or are at least luxuriously priced), and the kind of people the developers wish to attract aren’t the kind of people who would want to be seen dead being associated with “Slough” (from the Old English “Slo”, ‘a place of mire’). As they’re right next to the station, they can be in Windsor in a trice, so quickly in fact that they might be able to convince themselves that they are somehow from there. And having spent the day in the company of a real castle they’ll be able to come home to this development, complete with its own turreted reminder that even though they technically live in Slough, their upwardly-mobile and sniffily-sensitive souls actually belong over there, in Royal proximity and name-droppable social safety.

 

 

A Walk Around the New Developments on Railway Terrace, Part 1

 

 

New developments along Railway Terrace, central Slough

 

Panoramic view of the new developments behind Slough station. The complex on the left was built by Barratt Homes and is made up of one and two-bedroom flats. The tall grey block and the smaller one next to it, built by Metropolis Apartments a few years ago, consist of commuter-bait apartments for leasehold sale or rent that are sky-high in price as well as elevation (there’s a two-bed flat currently listed online for £290k, if you’re interested).

 

It’s Xanadu converted to flats for dozens of mini metropolitan commuter Citizen Kanes. It is the kind of deliberately un-subtle display of ostentation and flaunted status that’s usually at home in the Gulf, and when placed in Slough becomes an uncomfortable and inescapable reminder of the dividing process that is happening in the town: the separation of the moneyed, upwardly-mobile city-job commuter class away from the lower-paid, socially-stuck and stagnantly-mobile oiks that make up the bulk of Slough’s population.

 

One thing is obvious: it is for this affluent class that Slough’s ‘reinvention’ is being designed. The council’s obsession with attracting young, tech-savvy, business jargon-spouting upwardly-mobile iPad-eating airheads to the town, with suitably crass, unsympathetic (but “modern”, of course) developments dangled as a kind of down-lighted, laminate-floored, glass and steel carrot to lure them in, shows the town leaders’ dismissal of the ordinary subjects of Slough. The council’s aim is not to improve the Slough that exists, but to attract new, richer (read “better”) people to the town in the hope that everyone else will obligingly fuck off, and the town will be bettered by default.

 

 

‘Lexington’ apartment building, Railway Terrace

 

And so the revived trend of high-rise, high density building reaches its ultimate expression, literally reaching its most excessive peak. At 15 storeys (not counting the observation projection at the top) this is Slough’s tallest and most terrifying new building, a little bit of Dubai in East Berkshire. With its combination of staggered, asymmetric peak, grey, slate-like finish, steep drops and sheer bloody size it is the very definition of a ‘mountain-block’, a term created by this blog to describe the new species of development that we’ve seen cropping up in Slough lately; genealogically, it is the bloated grandchild of the 1960s’ experiments with high-rise-- modern residential development exposed to cosmic radiation and mutated to gargantuan size, like a battery chicken pumped full of growth hormones. It’s a block of flats on steroids.

 

The image is complete when gulls and crows, reduced to specks by the distance, sweep around its summit, giving it the look of a modern, mechanised, haunted castle on a hill, a bit like something out of a Tim Burton film. Parked amongst a skyline of similar buildings it would fit right in, but here it’s as out of place as an iceberg; if it were half the size maybe, it would still be large but would be perhaps forgivable. ‘The sky is the limit’, it proudly proclaims on the building’s brochure, a mantra the architect has taken all too literally.

 

 

‘Lexington’ apartment building, as seen from Platform 4, Slough station

 

Unlike its social housing forebears, the modern high-rise has been reinvented for the affluent. With its flats commanding eye-watering prices, and with the South-East’s housing shortage and hysteria over the supposed boon of the coming Crossrail project (an imminent plan to augment the rail links to London) pushing them up even further, it’s little wonder the project was built so large: every storey means lots and lots of extra cash. It was cynically built right up against the station in an obvious attempt to attract affluent city commuters, whose dull, Apprentice-watching minds would then be able to make the astounding cognitive leap that if…you…live…here…then..you..can..go..to..the..station…there… Meanwhile, Slough’s housing problems persist unperturbed, despite the sheer size of such developments.

 

It looms arrogantly over Slough’s historic railway station building, which is now sadly lost to the sheer number of hulking brutes that have been built all around it, all trying to cash in on the fact that if the station’s just there, then it’s only twenty minutes to London, and if you close your eyes really hard you can pretend that it is London. But this attitude does nothing for the town in the long run, as despite its proximity to the capital Slough is not a suburb.

 

 

New 'West Central' Apartments, Stoke Gardens

 

 

‘West Central’ development, seen from Stoke Gardens

 

Remember the scaffolded development in this post? Well, this is what hatched: a pair of joined six-storey cuboids containing apartments of varying size and  going under the suitably generic name ‘West Central’. The building was erected by Barratt Homes, who in the past earned a reputation for bland, uninspired, low-quality housing; this development clearly seeks to be a more modern, chic approach to er, bland, uninspired housing.

 

Echoes of the 60’s tower blocks we looked at in the last few posts are clear (even if these aren't as tall): flat roofs, geometric design, minimalist colour scheme, rendered finish. Variation in window size and subtle asymmetry prevent it from being too stultifying, although the awkwardly-included, poorly-positioned and stingily-proportioned little oriel windows poking out of the side give the development a rather cold, almost institutional feel– oriel windows are meant to be fun, not sharp, mean and intimidating. Some good weather above works well with the colour scheme in this shot, but the building is not so fortunate when Slough’s usual drab climate takes over.

 

So, nothing to write home about; another dull design and another instance of high-density developments being squeezed into the central ward of Slough. Two-bed flats were advertised online at £236k, with one-bed flats being listed at around £170k in November of last year; even at these eye-watering prices I’m sure every last inch will be snapped up, such is the demand in Slough at the moment– dull homes and desperation get on like a Barratt house on fire.

 

 

‘West Central’ development as seen from Grays Road.

 

Following from the last post, here’s the new West Central block development as it appears as part of the neighbourhood. Here’s a fun game: compare this view with the one in this post. In that picture, Tower House, a minimalist multi-storey cuboid, looms over its low-rise neighbours and is scheduled for demolition, finally erasing the last traces of the unpopular 1960s experiment with high-rise high-density housing; meanwhile, the brand, spanking new West Central, a minimalist multi-storey cuboid, er, looms over its low-rise neighbours and heralds the first chapter of a brave new world that we’ve, er, seen before and rejected. Like a game of whack-a-mole the moment one goes down another pops up somewhere else, identical to the last, and the town’s housing policy seems ever more absurd.

 

Refreshingly frank sign spotted in a shop window. There’s no beating about the bush here, Slough businesses get right to the point. Supply and demand, baby!

A Look at the old TVU Towers

 

 

Derelict tower on the former campus of Thames Valley University, Slough.

 

One of the former towers of Thames Valley University’s Slough campus gradually falling into dereliction. The campus was built around 1957 and was designed by F. Pooley, the Buckinghamshire County architect who also designed the magnificent Slough Library; we can only assume he was having a bit of an off day while designing the above.

 

Although designed as a college, the building bears some of the hallmarks of the grim office-structures of the period: cuboid shape, grid system of windows and dull panels, dull predictability masquerading as symmetry, and an general overall forgettable-ness that defines much of Slough’s mediocre facility buildings. And yet this ugly style proved to be a particularly fecund one: these towers’ DNA continues to be propagated forwards in the modern generation of office buildings– the graph-paper face of gridded windows and monochrome panels lives on in modern buildings such as the Urban Building on Windsor Rd.

 

The buildings have been abandoned for some time now, and are not long for this world, earmarked as they are for demolition as part of Slough’s ‘regeneration’ project. For once, whatever follows won’t have much of an act to follow.

 

 

Derelict former college tower, Slough (built 1957).

 

Another shot of one of the decaying, monolithic former Thames Valley University towers, which appears to have become a Travelodge for pigeons telling by the number of them perched on the ledges. Once, in its 60s heyday, it would have no doubt impressed the commissioning powers with its aura of technical progress and trendy Modernist references; now it’s a pigeon-pooed eyesore awaiting the demolition derby. A cautionary tale for today’s planners…

 

A Walk Around Slough Library

 

 

 

Slough Public Library

 

Formerly known as the Robert Taylor Library after a former Mayor of Slough, this building opened in 1974. It is one of Slough’s better buildings. It was designed by Fred Pooley, the county architect, in a style that you could probably call 'brutalism lite' if it were edible. At first glance it seems rather imposing, particularly the top floor with its narrow prison-esque windows and its overall grey daytime colour scheme, but on further inspection you can see that it is actually a balance of glass and concrete, with the bottom floor being almost all glass. At night, with the interior lit, it takes on a different character, even if during the day (and with that ominous CCTV camera perched on the corner) it carries a slight whiff of state totalitarianism.

 

As a public edifice, this imposing, forceful appearance gives the building a robust, stately feel that is reassuring when you realise that it is a free-to-enter public space that is yours to use. Brutalism worked best  in applications like these– solid, impassive arms of the state that were actually at the service of the little man, which is why so many libraries and cultural centres of the mid century used the style rather than simply reverting to anachronisms or historical kitsch.

 

Once upon a time both sides of this corner were filled with tall, terraced Victorian shops, similar to some of the older surviving stretches of the High Street; these were all knocked down in the 60s during a period of intensive development that would change Slough town centre completely. In this case, the addition of such a well-positioned and easily recognized major public building shows that the era was not without some merit.

 

 

Following from the last post, we see the mildly Brutalist 1974 Slough Library building taking on a different character in the dark evening. For a start we can see that there’s a lot more glass involved in the design than you notice in the daytime; bright, warm colour shines out from inside, the imposing concrete façade is lost to the gloom and you essentially see the inverse of the daytime building. The large ‘slabs’ on the mid-section prevent the design from being too voyeuristic, allowing for a little seclusion and privacy for those inside, while the glass sections offer tantalising glimpses of the warm, inviting interior, particularly the wooden-framed high ceiling of the middle floor. Even the little ‘prison’ windows on the top floor now seem to provide intriguing, Edward Hopper-esque views of what’s going on inside. See, the vibrant, naughty night-time side of Brutalism!

 

 

A final look at Slough Library. Close up, it appears more intricate than at first glance, and from this angle we can see the symmetry around the corners– all four sides follow the same pattern, with the current entrance being a low-key affair on the left-hand side (in the past it had multiple entrances open).

 

Sadly (and this is getting to be a common theme of this blog), this really will be a ‘final’ look at Slough Library: this useful building has fallen foul of the idle hands of Slough Borough Council, who have built a £22 million eyesore just opposite called ‘The Curve’, which is to bung various public facilities together including the library service. Nevermore will this excellent public space be used for study and enlightenment– from the various plans, it seems that it will be refashioned as a combination of retail and hotel space, and it doesn’t seem certain whether the building itself will stay. Even if this good example of a much-denigrated architectural style does survive the bulldozers, it will still be another instance of a dedicated and generous public space being commercialized, with the inner space, designed to be an optimistic centre of knowledge and open-mindedness, being purloined to sell you stuff, more stuff, paninis and coffees, mobile phone covers and cheap headphones, glued-together shoes and jewellery made of plastic, quack medicines and cheaper car insurance, and all the other tacky things that we’re supposed to dedicate our lives to collecting.

 

A Walk Around Tower House, Chalvey

 

 

View looking North up the Crescent, Chalvey.

 

The Crescent is a long, V-shaped street that is among Chalvey’s oldest, dating back to the late nineteenth century. Most of the houses along it are typical Victorian terraces, with some 20’s additions near the top. Overlooking it is Tower House, one of two tower blocks that were built here in 1966, one of only a few such high-rises to be built in Slough (until recently, that is). So in the same picture we have two different centuries’ approach to high-density housing: the tight-knit, compact Victorian terraces, with minimal but personalisable front ‘garden’ spaces (and a garden at the back), modest variations in visual design (but no difference in size)– and then the high-rise, characterised by its identical apartments with no distinction between different properties, minimalist verging on austere style, and a communal space at its foot to serve as ‘garden’ for all (not visible). Out of the two styles it is the low-rise, discernibly individual housing that has always won out as the favourite of the British public, but it is the multi-storey, high-density block that is once again being used as a myopic solution to the town’s housing shortage.

 

 

Close up of Tower House, Chalvey. Count the windows!

 

The mid-century obsession with high-rise building didn’t make much of a mark in Slough, but these two towers, built in 1966 (the heyday for such structures) remain as a reminder. Perhaps the ultimate expression of communal housing, the only marks of individuality come from the tiny views through each window– a patterned curtain here, a flag there. The sight of clothes awkwardly hung to dry by the window is the hallmark of these buildings. As you would expect, there is zero variation in window size or layout, no ornament (even the slight cornice halfway up seems more structural than aesthetic) and a minimalist, repeated colour scheme. The design is to act as a leveller of its occupants, allowing no differences in status and no visual sign of social mobility, upwards or downwards. This might have been a nice, humanistic idea had the chosen, default social level not been so unappealingly low and meagre: the end result simply became a twelve-storey tall advert for the occupants’ poverty.

 

It would be inaccurate to say that tower blocks fell out of favour with the British public, as they were never fully in favour to begin with. Occupants with aspirations of their own space and individualism could only look out the window at everyone else’s modest, but distinct properties, while parents complained that it was no place to raise a family; perhaps the only impressed tenants were people in need of affordable one or two bedroom accommodation who at best saw the flats as temporary and expedient measures.

 

And yet architects loved them– le Corbusier‘s Utopian talk of “streets in the sky” and socially-equalled communities enclosed in single buildings, plus an ecological desire to minimise built-up urban areas led to design after design for multi-storey monsters. Local authorities quickly latched onto the idea of housing large numbers of people in small, high-density concentrations that would be quick and theoretically cheap to put up, particularly at a time when slum-clearance was still a national housing goal. It was ironic then, that so many of these projects simply devolved into vertical slums, marred by disrepair, poor maintenance and monotony of design, and characterised by lack of social mixing and anti-social behaviour.

 

 

Communal area at the foot of Tower and Ashbourne Houses, Chalvey.

 

In lieu of a private garden, the occupants of communal housing such as these tower blocks get communal green space to go with it– fully communal, as the space is as open to the rest of the public as it is to the people who live in the towers. Here there are a few trees and some modest playground activities for the children, a slide, a swing, a frame, a childhood’s worth of play, activity and nature condensed to an area not much larger than the towers’ car park, a precious nugget amidst the drudgery.

 

This would make it all the more keenly felt, you would think. But alas, don’t get too used to this scene: Slough Borough Council have spotted it and, you guessed it, want to build over it. The plan is to demolish the two 60s tower blocks and build new housing over their stead and over this all-important green space. It is a sad indictment of the current thinking in town development that someone can look at the only public greenery in the neighbourhood for these kids and treat it as expendable or unimportant, thinking “we should squeeze more housing on there” instead. Why is the council always so quick to build on the few remaining green spaces when there are still so many undeveloped brownfield sites sitting around dormant?

 

As usual, the concerns of residents have fallen onto deaf, indifferent ears. The end result will be a dangerous density of people in an environment that will be even less dignified than what exists now. There is no point in trying to solve Slough’s housing shortfall by making it less habitable, as all the town will end up with is more misery shouldered by more people. There isn’t grass to graze a cow, Betjeman wrote, in his poem about Slough; in the future, you’ll be lucky if there’s enough to nourish a bunny.

Further details here: http://www.sloughobserver.co.uk/news/13619613.Community_pleads_with_council_help_to_save_green_land_in_Chalvey/