Three Picture Story

From the Friendly-Bombs archives: Three pictures tell a tiny story of life in the under-class

 

 

This short Victorian terrace used to stand on the Bath Road, at numbers 150-160. A few years ago Slough Borough Council decided to condemn the row to demolition, as part of a bludgeoning scheme of road-widening along the Bath Road. The houses were bought up with compulsory purchase orders, the occupants moved out, and then, as usual, the gears slowed down. During the lull in development, the buildings were let for five years (until 2009) to a social landlord, after which the council toyed with the idea of renovating the now-derelict houses to serve as temporary accommodation for Slough’s homeless but decided against it, saying that it wouldn’t be cost-viable. No compromise was offered.

 

 

With the houses standing vacant for so long, homeless people moved in; the front was boarded up, but you could see washing hanging in the overgrown back gardens. People were now living there, whether the Council had approved it or not. Despite this, and although they were still waiting for a final decision on funding for the road-widening, the Council decided to press ahead with demolition to ‘demonstrate the Council’s commitment’ to the traffic plan. Eviction notices appeared on the doors of the houses telling the homeless people inside to clear off.

 

 

 

For a little while afterwards you could see the aftermath of the eviction littered outside: bedding, simple furniture, clothes and in particular lots of shoes- the latter being particularly telling as amongst the pile you could see men’s, women’s and children’s shoes. Here we see these meagre accoutrements of lives on the edge now literally lying on the edge of the busy road, a testament to the layer of precarious lives that exist almost invisibly within busy, bustling towns and cities.

 

A little while later the buildings came down, but as of Summer 2016 there is no advance on the road-widening scheme or the promised residential redevelopment of the rest of the space; it simply remains as an overgrown, empty gap. There is no mention in the Council reports of what happened to the people who, for a while, called it home and were then moved on like human tumbleweed, and for many this will be a non-story; but it’s hard to let go of the feeling that, with the sight of peoples’ garments blowing down the street in the car-breeze, a sad little human episode happened here, and was swiftly forgotten.