Place:Slough, Buckinghamshire, England

Watchers
NameSlough
Alt namesWexham Parksource: 20th century suburb
Britwellsource: 20th century suburb
TypeTown
Coordinates51.517°N 0.6°W
Located inBuckinghamshire, England     ( - 1974)
Also located inBerkshire, England     (1974 - )
See alsoUpton cum Chalvey, Buckinghamshire, Englandoriginal joint parish which made up central Slough in 1894
Slough Borough, Berkshire, Englandborough and unitary authority covering the town since 1974
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Historically, the larger part of the present-day Slough area was formerly in Buckinghamshire with a small part of the borough a part of Middlesex. Slough is home to the Slough Trading Estate, which, coupled with extensive transport links, makes it an important business centre in South East England. It is the largest industrial estate in single private ownership in Europe. The town straddles the A4 Bath Road (it becomes the Great West Road closer to London) and the Great Western Main Line railway, west of central London. The whole of Slough is located less than 15 miles from the UK's largest airport, Heathrow. At the 2001 census, the population of Slough was 119,070 (140,200 in 2011) and the borough area was the most ethnically diverse local authority area outside London in the United Kingdom.

In 1974 county boundaries were changed and Slough became a borough within the county of Berkshire, England. In 1998 Berkshire organized its local government structure into unitary authorities, one of which was Slough Borough.

Contents

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

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. 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 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. There are

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. 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.

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.

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.

Redevelopment

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, and planning approval was given by Slough Borough Council's planning committee on 9 July 2009. Work began in 2010 for completion in 2018.

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. 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. 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. The park was featured in an episode of the documentary programme Who Do You Think You Are? focusing on the TV presenter Davina McCall.

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. 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. 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 and was opened in May 2011, 5 months behind schedule.

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.

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

The Town Hall has since been torn down and replaced by a multi-storey apartment block. Cippenham is a suburb of Slough originally in Burnham parish. Salt Hill was a village in Farnham Royal and Stoke Poges parishes adjacent to the north end of Slough.

The following description of Slough from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72 is a very good snapshot of a 19th-century "new town". (Source:A Vision of Britain through Time)

"SLOUGH, a town in Upton-cum-Chalvey and Stoke-Poges parishes, Bucks; on the Great Western railway, at the junction of the branch to Windsor, 2 miles NNE of Windsor. It stands on gravelly soil; is remarkably salubrious; has grown rapidly from the condition of a village since the railway epoch; presents a well built and pleasant appearance; includes Upton-Park, consisting of 27 first-class residences, with a fine view of Windsor Castle; includes also Herschell House, the seat of successively Sir W. [Herschell], and Sir J. [Herschell], where the former erected his large telescope, and made most of his discoveries; is a seat of petty sessions; and has a head post-office, a [railway] station with telegraph, two hotels, a police station, a Norman church restored in 1851, another church built in 1837, an Independent chapel of 1853, a Wesleyan chapel of 1847, a reading room, a mechanics' institute, the British orphan asylum, national schools, British schools, and a weekly cattle market on Tuesday. Population in 1861: 3,425. Houses: 627. Population in 1868: about 4,500."

Boundaries

In 1863, Slough became a local government area when a Slough Local Board of Health was elected to represent what is now the central part of the modern Borough. This part of Upton cum Chalvey, Buckinghamshire, England Civil Parish became Slough Urban Sanitary District in 1875. The functions of these two bodies were strengthened in 1894, when Slough Urban District was created, Buckinghamshire County Council having been created in the previous decade. In 1900 part of Langley Marish parish was transferred into Slough, and in 1930, a much larger expansion to the west. Parts of the parishes of Burnham, Dorney, Farnham Royal and Stoke Poges and more of Langley Marish were absorbed at this time. In 1938, the town became a Municipal Borough by Royal Charter.

Slough was transferred to Berkshire in the 1974 local government reorganisation. The old Municipal Borough was abolished and since it was not deemed part of an urban conglomeration, replaced by a non-city type second-tier authority called a non-metropolitan district. Slough was however made a Borough by the town's second Royal Charter. Britwell and Wexham Court civil parishes (20th century housing estates and parts of the municipal borough) became part of Slough at this time. On 1 April 1995, the Borough of Slough expanded slightly into Buckinghamshire and Surrey to the east, to take in the civil parishes of Colnbrook and Poyle (which had originally been in Middlesex).

Slough became a unitary authority, on 1 April 1998. This coincided with the abolition of Berkshire County Council and the dissolution of Slough's Borough Status received under its second Royal Charter. Howerver, to enable the continued use of the word Borough, as in some other parts of Berkshire, Slough received its third Royal Charter in 1998.

Research Tips

Registration Offices

Maps

  • An outline map of the current civil parishes of Buckinghamshire (post 1974 and omitting Milton Keynes unitary authority) is provided by the Boundaries Commission.
  • Another map which gives no source, appears to have been drawn to show the county in the late 19th century and labels the parishes directly. However, the map does not show towns and villages (unless they are parishes using the same name) and some parishes have been found to be missing from this map.
  • A map provided by the Open University (a British university based in Milton Keynes) gives the locations of the old civil parishes and the new communities that make up Milton Keynes. It can be expanded to read the labels.

Registration Offices

Birth, marriage and death certificates can now be ordered online from Buckinghamshire County Council. The full postal address is Buckinghamshire Register Office, County Hall, Walton Street, Aylesbury, HP20 1YU.

The Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies (County Hall, Walton Street, Aylesbury, HP20 1UU) holds

  • Church of England and Nonconformist churches including registers of baptism, marriage and burial.
  • Around 35,000 wills proved by the Archdeaconry of Buckingham.
  • County and District Councils (lists of councillors, minutes of meetings, etc).
  • Quarter and Petty Session courts.
  • Landed estates of families including the Aubrey-Fletchers, Hampdens, Carringtons and Fremantles.
  • Historic maps including OS, tithe and inclosure maps
  • A wide range of local history books, some for loan.
  • Pamphlets and articles of local history interest.
  • Local newspapers
  • Computers for access to family history resources like Ancestry and FreeBMD.
  • Published material is listed in the Library Catalogue.
  • Catalogues to some of our manuscript material is available through Access to Archives, part of The National Archives (TNA). Their database contains catalogues describing archives held locally in England and Wales and dating from the eighth century to the present day.

In Buckinghamshire, as with other counties in England and Wales, the location of offices where Births, Marriages and Deaths were registered has altered with other changes in local government. A list of the location of Registration Offices since civil registration began in 1837 has been prepared by GENUKI (Genealogy: United Kingdom and Ireland). The table also gives details of when each Registration Office was in existence. In the case of Buckinghamshire, the same registration offices were used for the censuses since 1851. Buckinghamshire now only has a central registration office at County Hall in Aylesbury, but there are facilities for registering births, marriages and deaths in specific libraries around the county.

Nineteenth Century Local Administration

English Jurisdictions is a webpage provided by FamilySearch which analyses every ecclesiastical parish in England at the year 1851. It provides, with the aid of outline maps, the date at which parish records and bishops transcripts begin, non-conformist denominations with a chapel within the parish, the names of the jurisdictions in charge: county, civil registration district, probate court, diocese, rural deanery, poor law union, hundred, church province; and links to FamilySearch historical records, FamilySearch Catalog and the FamilySearch Wiki. Two limitations: only England, and at the year 1851.

During the 19th century two bodies, the Poor Law Union and the Sanitary District, had responsibility for governmental functions at a level immediately above that covered by the civil parish. In 1894 these were replace by Rural and Urban Districts. These were elected bodies, responsible for setting local property assessments and taxes as well as for carrying out their specified duties. Thses districts continued in operation until 1974. Urban districts for larger municipalities were called "Municipal Boroughs" and had additional powers and obligations.

Poor Law Unions, established nationally in 1834, combined parishes together for the purpose of providing relief for the needy who had no family support. This led to the building of '"union poorhouses" or "workhouses" funded by all the parishes in the union. The geographical boundaries established for the individual Poor Law Unions were employed again when Registration Districts were formed three years later. In 1875 Sanitary Districts were formed to provide services such as clean water supply, sewage systems, street cleaning, and the clearance of slum housing. These also tended to follow the same geographical boundaries, although there were local alterations caused by changes in population distribution.

Online Historical References

  • GENUKI for Buckinghamshire provides a lot of material on the county history from a variety of aspects. The maps of the hundreds are reproduced from 19th century publications and show the topology as well as the locations of the various parishes. There is also a schematic map covering the whole county. GENUKI does not contain much information about the 20th century and beyond.
  • Local History Online provides a list of local historical organizations. Each of these societies and organizations has its own website.
  • The FamilySearch Wiki on Buckinghamshire explains the jurisdictions relating to civil affairs, parishes and probate (wills and testaments) for each parish in the county and also outlines when these jurisdictions were in existence. The data does not cover the post-1974 period.
source: Family History Library Catalog
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Slough. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.