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!