Slough

Former GWR locomotive 6664 photographed near the engine shed at Slough, October 1955

The Brunel bus station and car park, opened in 1975[10] has now been demolished as work has started on the Heart of Slough project.[11]

Robert Taylor Library

Suters Limited in Slough High Street, 1978

The name was first recorded in 1195 as Slo. It first seems to have applied to a hamlet between Upton to the east and Chalvey to the west, roughly around the "Crown Crossroads" where the road to Windsor (now the A332) met the Great West Road.[12] The Domesday Survey of 1086 refers to Upton, and a wood for 200 pigs, worth £15. During the 13th century, King Henry III had a palace at Cippenham. Parts of Upton Court were built in 1325, while St Mary the Virgin Church[13] in Langley was probably built in the late 11th or early 12th century, though it has been rebuilt and enlarged several times.

From the mid-17th century, stagecoaches began to pass through Slough and Salt Hill (later absorbed into Slough), which became locations for the second stage to change horses on the journey out from London. By 1838 and the opening of the Great Western Railway, Upton-cum-Chalvey's parish population had reached 1,502. In 1849, a branch line was completed from Slough to Windsor & Eton Central, opposite Windsor Castle, for Queen Victoria's convenience.

Slough has 96 listed buildings.[14] There are

• Four Grade I: St Laurence's Church (Upton), St Mary the Virgin Church, Langley,[13] Baylis House and Godolphin Court
• Seven Grade II*: St Mary's Church (Upton-cum-Chalvey), Upton Court, the Kederminster and Seymour Almshouses in Langley, St Peter's Church (Chalvey), Ostrich Inn (Colnbrook) and King John's Palace (Colnbrook)
• Grade II listed structures include four milestones, Beech, Oak and Linden Houses at Upton Hospital, St Ethelbert's Church, Slough and Slough railway station.

1918 saw a large area of agricultural land to the west of Slough developed as an army motor repair depot, used to store and repair huge numbers of motor vehicles coming back from the battlefields of the First World War in Flanders. In April 1920, the Government sold the site and its contents to the Slough Trading Co. Ltd. Repair of ex-army vehicles continued until 1925, when the Slough Trading Company Act was passed allowing the company (renamed Slough Estates Ltd) to establish an industrial estate.[15] Spectacular growth and employment ensued, with Slough attracting workers from many parts of the UK and abroad. Slough Town Hall, which was designed by Charles Holloway James and Stephen Rowland Pierce, was completed in 1937.[16]

During the Second World War, Slough experienced a series of air raids, mostly in October 1940 (the largest number of people, five, dying as a result of one on the 13th), and an emergency hospital treating casualties from London was set up in Slough. Local air raid deaths and deaths at the hospital account for the 23 civilian lives recorded lost in the borough area.[17]

After the war, several further large housing developments arose to take large numbers of people migrating from war-damaged London. Between 1955 and 1957 the town was the site of the Slough experiment, a large-scale road safety trial.[18]

The old Slough library was opened on 28 November 1974. It was officially called the Robert Taylor Library, named after Alderman Taylor in recognition of his contribution to the library service. The library was officially opened by the Mayor, Councillor DR Peters, on 15 May 1975. It was demolished in May 2017 as part of the programme of redevelopment in the town centre.[19]

Redevelopment

The redevelopment of the shopping centre in Slough as part of the Heart of Slough redevelopment programme

The newly built Slough bus station in April 2013

'The Curve', Slough's distinctively shaped Library and Cultural Centre, opened in 2016. It was named 'Best public service building' at the Local Authority Building Control (LABC) excellence awards held in March 2017. It was built by Slough Urban Renewal, a partnership between the council and Morgan Sindall.

Old Town Hall: Council's headquarters 1937-2011, now a school.

In the 21st century, Slough has seen major redevelopment of the town centre. Old buildings are being replaced with new offices and shopping complexes. Tesco has replaced an existing superstore with a larger Tesco Extra. The Heart of Slough Project is a plan for the large-scale redevelopment of the town centre as a focus and cultural quarter for the creative media, information and communications industries. It will create a mixed-use complex, multi-functional buildings, visual landmarks and a public space in the Thames Valley. Recommendations for the £400 million project have been approved,[20] and planning approval was given by Slough Borough Council's planning committee on 9 July 2009.[21] Work began in 2010 for completion in 2018.[22]

In December 2009, two key components of the project were signed: the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) signed its agreement to provide £11m of funding for infrastructure and Thames Valley University (TVU) courses which are due to remain in the town have found a new home at the Centre in Farnham Road, Slough.[23] In parallel to the town centre redevelopment plan, Segro (owner of the Slough Trading Estate) plans to spend £600 million over the next 20 years on the trading estate. This is intended to create environmentally sustainable buildings, open green spaces, two hotels, a conference centre, cafés, restaurants and better transport facilities to improve links to Slough town centre and the surrounding residential areas. It is claimed that the plan will create more than 4,100 new jobs and contribute around £100m a year to Slough's economy.[24] If both plans go ahead in their current forms, nearly £1 billion will be spent on redeveloping Slough over the next 20 years.

Herschel Park (known as Upton Park until 1949), named for astronomer William Herschel, is currently being relandscaped in a multimillion-pound effort to bring it back to its former Victorian era glory.[25] The park was featured in an episode of the documentary programme Who Do You Think You Are? focusing on the TV presenter Davina McCall.[26]

In 2010, £2 million was set aside to improve disabled access to Slough railway station in preparation for an expected increase in use during the 2012 London Olympics.[27] Preparations were under way for the regeneration of the Britwell suburb of Slough, involving tearing down a dilapidated block of flats and the closing of the public house the Jolly Londoner in Wentworth Avenue and replacing them with new homes, as well as relocating the shopping parade in the street to nearby Kennedy Park.[28] As part of the Heart of Slough project, construction work on a new bus station began in March 2010 following weeks of demolition work to half of the existing bus station and the removal of Compair House near the railway station; it was expected to be completed by January 2011[11][29] and was opened in May 2011, 5 months behind schedule. The bus station was seriously damaged by a fire on 29 October 2022, which started from a parked bus and spread across the roof of the station, damaging three other buses that were being stored overnight and forcing bus operators to arrange temporary bus stands nearby.[30][31]

Redevelopment on this scale has been strongly criticised by conservation groups. The Twentieth Century Society has stated that

[A] tragically high quantity of good buildings have been demolished in Slough in recent years, including grand Art-Deco-styled factories by the likes of Wallis Gilbert and high-quality post-war offices. More are to come down as the town tries to erase its past and reinvent itself from scratch. Despite famously heckling Slough, John Betjeman's praise for the town hall's architecture as 'a striving for unity out of chaos' in 1948 has never been so relevant as today. C20 believes that the redevelopment of the town hall would be an act of vandalism to the civic centre and is supporting the Campaign to Save Slough's Heritage in their request for a review of the decision.[32]

During November 2016, the Slough Queensmere and Observatory shopping centres were sold to Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) in a deal worth £130 million.[33]

Slough is 20 miles (32 km) west of Charing Cross, central London, 2 miles (3 km) north of Windsor, 5 miles (8 km) east of Maidenhead, 11 miles (18 km) south-east of High Wycombe and 19 miles (31 km) north-east of the county town of Reading. Slough is within the Greater London Urban Area and on the border with London Borough of Hillingdon and London Borough of Hounslow. Heathrow Airport is 5 miles away. Nearby towns are Uxbridge to the northeast and Beaconsfield to the north.

Most of the area that now makes up Slough was anciently part of Buckinghamshire, however, Poyle was historically in Middlesex. The town developed by the expansion and amalgamation of villages along the Great West Road. Over the years Slough has expanded greatly, incorporating a number of different villages. Original villages that are now suburbs of Slough include Chalvey, Cippenham, Colnbrook, Langley, Poyle, Upton, and Wexham.

Named neighbourhoods include Brands Hill, Britwell, Huntercombe, Manor Park, Salt Hill, Upton Lea and Windsor Meadows. The urban area merges into the neighbouring parishes of Burnham, a small area of Taplow near Cippenham, Farnham Royal and Stoke Poges which remain in the county of Buckinghamshire and Datchet which is also in Berkshire. Eton is narrowly buffered by the Jubilee River and by green space (mainly the college playing fields) from part of Slough, and the two areas formerly formed the Eton birth, marriages and deaths registration district.

Built in 1876, St Mary's Church is a red brick gothic style Church of England parish church.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, many unemployed Welsh people who walked up the Great West Road looking for employment settled in Slough.

According to the 2011 census, 45.7% of the population was white (34.5% white British, 1.1% white Irish, 0.2% gypsy or Irish Traveller, 9.9% other white), 3.4% of mixed race (1.2% white and black Caribbean, 0.4% white and black African, 1.0% white and Asian, 0.8% other mixed), 39.7% Asian (17.7% Pakistani, 15.6% Indian, 0.4% Bangladeshi, 0.6% Chinese, 5.4% other Asian), 8.6% black (5.4% African, 2.2% Caribbean, 1.0% other black), 0.7% Arab and 1.9% of other ethnic heritage.[38] In the post-war years, immigrants from the Commonwealth, notably Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, India and Pakistan came to the town. There is also a significant Irish and London-Irish population from London overspill.

In the early 1950s, there were a number of Polish refugee camps scattered around the Slough area. As returning to Poland (then in the Soviet Bloc) was not considered an option by many of the wartime refugees, many Polish families decided to settle in Slough. In time, a Polish-speaking Roman Catholic parish was established with its own church building. A new wave of Polish migration to Slough has followed since Poland became part of the European Union.

Slough Council elected the country's first black female mayor, Lydia Simmons, in 1984.

Figures from the 2011 census showed that 41.2% of Slough's population identified as Christian, 23.3% as Muslim, 10.6% as Sikh, 6.2% as Hindu, 0.5% as Buddhist, 0.1% as Jewish, 0.3% as having other religions, 12.1% as having no religion and 5.7% did not answer the question. Slough has the highest percentage of Sikh residents in the country according to the census figures. Slough also has the highest percentage of Muslim and Hindu residents in the South East region.[39]

Immigrants in Slough (2011 census)

Country of birth	Number resident
India	11,544
Pakistan	11,244
Poland	8,341
Kenya	2,183
Ireland	1,364
Zimbabwe	1,352
Somalia	1,247
Sri Lanka	1,219
Philippines	828
Afghanistan	759

In July 2007 Slough was the subject of a documentary by the BBC's Panorama series, entitled "Immigration – how we lost count".[40][41] The programme highlighted Slough and other affordable towns close to London had a much greater rise in the EU immigrant population than had been nationally predicted and for which resources had been allocated. The programme found certain public services failing to deliver to expected standards and with large groups selecting a small area in which to live, an increase in overcrowding.

Slough Trading Estate played a major part in making Slough an important business centre in South East England.

The Tesco Extra store, one of the largest in Europe

The private power station for Slough Trading Estate. This has been supplying heat and power to the estate since 1920. In 2007 it was taken over by energy supplier Scottish and Southern Energy.

Slough Retail Park, one of many large outlets in the town.

Before the 19th century, the main businesses of Slough were brickfields and agriculture. The bricks for the building of Eton College were made in Slough. Later, as the Great West Road traffic increased, inns and pubs sprang up along the road to service the passing trade. Until the town developed as an industrial area, nurseries were prominent in the local economy; the Cox's Orange Pippin apple was first raised in Colnbrook (not then within Slough) around 1825, and the dianthus "Mrs Sinkins Pink" was first raised at some point between 1868[43] and 1883[44] by John Sinkins, the master of the Eton Union Workhouse,[45] which lay in Slough.

In the mid-19th century, the only major employer apart from the brickfields was James Elliman, who started as a draper in Chandos Street. In 1847, he changed business and manufactured his Elliman's Embrocation and Royal Embrocation horse liniment at factories in Wellington Street and Chandos Street. Elliman became a major benefactor to the town, and is remembered today in the names of local roads and schools.

In September 1851, William Thomas Buckland, an auctioneer and surveyor from nearby Wraysbury, began livestock sales in a field near the Great Western Road Railway Station belonging to the North Star Inn. Originally held on the first Tuesday of every month, the Cattle Market's popularity soon saw this increased to every Tuesday. A move to Wexham Street was necessitated by the postwar redevelopment of the town. The Slough Cattle Market was run by Messrs Buckland and Sons until its final closure in 1988.[46]

In 1906, James Horlick, one of the founders of the eponymous malted milk company, opened a purpose-built red-brick factory near Slough Railway Station to manufacture his malted milk product. In 2015, the business was sold by Glaxo Smith Kline and in 2017, manufacturing at the site ceased altogether. The site is currently proposed to become residential making use of the original buildings as much as possible.

Starting in the 1920s, Slough Estates Ltd, the operator of the original Slough Trading Estate, created and operated many more estates in the UK and abroad. The Slough Trading Estate meant that the town was largely insulated from many of the effects of recession. For many years, Slough's economy was mainly manufacturing-based.

In the last 20 or so years, there has been a major shift from a manufacturing to an information-based economy, with the closure of many factories (some of which had been in Slough for many decades). The factories are rapidly being replaced by office buildings. Hundreds of major companies have sited in Slough Trading Estate over the years, with its proximity to London Heathrow Airport and good motorway connections being attractive. In the 1960s, Gerry Anderson's film company was based in Slough, and his Supermarionation series, including Thunderbirds, were filmed there.[47]

The UK headquarters of Mars, Incorporated is in Slough, the main factory having been established in 1932 by Forrest Mars Sr. and Frank C. Mars. It produced the Mars Bar in Slough over 70 years ago. One of the Mars factories has been demolished and some production has moved to the Czech Republic. The European head offices of major IT companies such as BlackBerry, McAfee, Computer Associates, PictureTel and Compusys (among others) are all in the town. O₂ is headquartered in the town across four buildings. The town is also home to the business support organisation Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce Group and National Foundation for Educational Research, which is housed in the Mere.

Recent new offices include those of Nintendo, Black and Decker and Abbey business centres.[48] The registered office of Furniture Village lies in the town.[49]

The motor trade has long been represented in Slough. Until 1966, Citroën assembled cars in a Liverpool Road factory (later used by Mars Confectionery), and it retains its UK headquarters in the town. Ford built D Series and Cargo lorries at its factory in Langley (a former Hawker Aircraft site) from 1936 to the 1950s[50] until the site was redeveloped for housing in the 1990s. Ferrari, Mercedes, Fiat and Maserati now have offices in the town.

Slough has a senior non-League football team, Slough Town F.C., who currently play in the National League South. Slough also host the ice hockey team, the Slough Jets. They play in NIHL south 1 division.

Reading F.C. Womens and Republic of Ireland Womens goalkeeper Grace Moloney was born and lives in the town.[66]

There are numerous primary and secondary schools serving Slough. In addition, East Berkshire College has a campus in the area. Slough schools are in the top 10 best performers in the country at GCSE level. In 2011, 68.1% of pupils left school with a minimum of 5 A*-C grades (with English and maths). The national average is 58.9%.[67]

Thames Valley University (Slough Campus) is currently closed due to the Heart of Slough project. The new campus was scheduled to be opened in 2013 as part of the University of West London. However, as of March 2022 there has been no progress. In fact the former site of the university has been sold for housing.

Observatory House was given its name because it is the site where astronomer William Herschel lived, and erected his great 40-foot telescope.

Crossbow House features in the opening sequences and some of the filming for popular BBC comedy The Office.

• 1597: In Act IV, Scene 5[68] of Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor, Bardolph is mugged: "so soon as I came beyond Eton, (cozenors) threw me off, from behind one of them, in a slough of mire". This could be a reference to Slough. In the same scene Cole-brooke (Colnbrook) is referenced along with Reading and Maidenhead.
• 1872: Edward Lear made reference to Slough in More Nonsense Pictures, Rhymes, Botany, etc:[69]

There was an old person of Slough,

Who danced at the end of a bough;

But they said, 'If you sneeze,

You might damage the trees,

You imprudent old person of Slough.'

• 1932: (but set in the 26th century) In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, the chimneys of Slough Crematorium, around which Bernard Marx flies, are used to demonstrate the physio-chemical equality of all people.[70] (Slough's actual crematorium, in the cemetery in Stoke Road, was opened in 1963,[71] coincidentally the year of Huxley's death. Princess Margaret was cremated there in 2002.)
• 1937: The poet John Betjeman wrote his poem Slough as a protest against the new town and 850 factories that had arisen in what had been formerly a rural area, which he considered an onslaught on the rural lifestyle:

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough

It isn't fit for humans now

There isn't grass to graze a cow.

Swarm over, death!

The poem was published two years before the outbreak of the Second World War, in which Britain (including Slough itself) experienced bombing from enemy air raids. On the centenary of his birth, his daughter said her father "regretted having ever written it", presenting the then Mayor David MacIsaac with a book of his poems in which she had written: "We love Slough".[72]

• 1979: Slough is mentioned by name in the hit single "The Eton Rifles" by The Jam from the album Setting Sons: "There's a row going on down near Slough"
• 1991: Film Buddy's Song with externals filmed mainly on the Britwell Estate and the Farnham Road (A355) released.
• 1996: The Tiger Lillies' album The Brothel to the Cemetery includes a track called "Slough", probably inspired by Betjeman's poem. The lyrics to the chorus are:

Drop a bomb on Slough, Drop a bomb on Slough

Drop a bomb on Slough, Drop a bomb on Slough

• 1998: The song "Costa del Slough" by the rock band Marillion posits the town as a post-global warming coastal resort, possibly in a reference to the comedian Spike Milligan having presented Slough on TV as a holiday resort.
• 2001: The BBC comedy series The Office was set in the sales office of a paper company in Slough, presenting it as a depressing post-industrial wasteland. The character David Brent comments on Betjeman's poem in the series, which also appears on the inside sleeve of the video and DVD of Series 1. In the US version, the office is located on "Slough Avenue" in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
• 2004: Slough is mentioned on the ABC series Lost in the episode "Homecoming" of Season 1. In a flashback of Charlie's life, a woman he knows says her father is away purchasing a paper company in Slough. It is possible that this is a reference to The Office.
• 2009: In episode 8, Series 1 of The Legend of Dick and Dom, a CBBC show, the characters find themselves in modern-day Slough.
• 2010-2022: In the novels by Mick Herron and the Apple+ TV series, Slow Horses, Slough House is the MI5 branch where washed-up spies are sent to finish their failed careers on desk duty. The name derives from the fact that, as Slough is distant from London, similarly Slough House is equally far away from the headqurters of MI5 in Regents Park for the disgraced spies hoping to revive their careers.
• 2015: Sky One comedy drama series You, Me and the Apocalypse is set in Slough where a nuclear bunker is located underneath the Slough Trading Estate. Aerial views are seen of Slough throughout the series.
• 2016: Ricky Gervais, in his role as David Brent, released the song Slough on his album Life on the Road, the soundtrack to the film by the same title. The chorus runs:

Oh oh oh Slough (echo: Slough)

My kind of town

I don't know how

Anyone could put you down

Slough has a relatively high crime rate; figures for all crime categories are annually above the English average and figures for a few categories are at more than double the frequency.[73] According to British Crime Survey statistics, as of September 2013, Slough had the second worst rate of crime among local authority areas in the Thames Valley Police counties (87 recorded crimes per 1,000 population vs Oxford's 104).[74] However the borough's crime rate reduced by 29% in the ten years to 2013.[75] In the year ending September 2017, the crime rate in Slough was the third highest in the Thames Valley force area, behind Reading (96.42 police recorded crimes per 1000 population) and Oxford (100.71 for the same metric).[74]

• List of people from Slough

• Fraser, Maxwell (1973). The History of Slough. Slough Corporation. ISBN 978-0-904164-00-8.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Slough.

• Slough travel guide from Wikivoyage
• Slough Borough Council
• Slough History Online