What do you do on a dull afternoon in Slough?

That is probably a question most of you have never thought about but, for me, it was the question I was facing after a mixup over training sessions and timings. I had a whole afternoon to spend in the town.

Those of you who do not know Slough, may also be unaware that it is the subject of many jokes. I shall not repeat the jokes and simply say that the town is generally regarded as being dull, dreary and dead. If you are interested, do a google search for ‘John Betjeman Slough’; the result will give you an impression of what I’m saying.

Now for the twist. I was born in Slough and was raised (dragged up) as a child for the first twenty years of my life. It is, however, over forty years since I left the town and this is my first time back since.

So my answer to the problem was to go around the town, hunt out some of the places from my childhood and see how much had changed.

As you would expect, in forty years a lot had changed but at least the station was recognisable.

This old building had hardly changed since it was first built. Sure the trains serving the station had changed a lot; the line has been electrified and London Underground trains now call at the station, but the building itself was largely the same. Outside, though, was very different. There was a large pedestrian forecourt and it seemed that only taxis were allowed to use the road outside the station. The Slough Observer building was no longer standing, in its place was a large co-working office and a Starbucks (well, that’s a positive in my book).

Considering that my years in Slough had been childhood years, it was not surprising that I wanted to see how places associated with that childhood had changed. Consequently, a lot of my time was spent searching for places we had lived as a family and for schools I attended. I should, at this point, mention that the family moved two or three times within the Slough area and, as a consequence, I attended 3 different primary schools.

I was born in the Cippenham area of Slough and I would have liked to see our first house. However, that part of Slough seemed poorly served by public transport and, with only one afternoon available to me, I had to make the decision not to journey to this part of the town. My first exploration was, therefore, to Grant Avenue, which is where the family spent most of our time in Slough. I was also eager to seek out other key locations around that area, including one of my primary schools (even though I knew it had been pulled down and rebuilt in a different location)

Bus routes have changed in Slough over the forty years. That should be no surprise. Routes 446 and 446a, which served the area of our old housed, were no longer in existence. In fact all the routes had changed; they had changed numbers and also routes travelled. All had changed with just one exception; route 81 was still the only London Bus (now TfL) which served Slough and it still ran between Slough Station and Hounslow. It was also still a red bus albeit now a double-decker instead of the single deck bus of yore. Consulting a couple of apps, I ascertained that there were two routes I could take from the town centre to the top of Elliman Avenue, which is where I used to alight. I could also have walked the route I used to when I was a kid but I didn’t fancy that and if I were to fit in as many locations as possible, the bus would be quicker.

This made stark the first big change in the town centre. The bus station which had been made famous by appearing in the opening titles of the TV comedy ‘The Office’, is no longer standing. Instead it seems to have been replaced by a new bus station which looks like a metal condom. Even so, stop 12 was not in the bus station but in a side street outside.

Also missing from the town centre was the Library building. I can recall this being built and opened. I believe it even won awards for its architecture or design. Yet, it was no more.

I found the correct bus stop and a bus was already waiting. I boarded it and it set off for Elliman Avenue. While it travelled along, I looked through the windows seeking places that might look familiar. Suddenly I realised that the bus would drive past St Paul’s Church. This was the church where I had been a choir boy. Hastily, I took out my phone camera and tried to snap an image of the church through the bus window. The results were not impressive but at least the church was still there and still clearly recognisable.

Elliman Avenue was clearly recognisable, the houses did not seem to have changed much apart from being in a decidedly more dilapidated condition; the most noticeable change was that many front garden walls had been knocked down to create parking areas at the front of the houses. I would say that, forty years ago not so many families had cars. I found the old bus stop I used to get off at and I just about managed to press the request button in time to get the bus to stop. It was strange but I swear the journey used to take much longer back in my day!

Once off the bus, I had a choice of two routes to take. I could either walk back down Elliman Avenue to trace the old primary school or I could walk onward toward our old home. I decided first the hunt down the old James Elliman Primary School. This was the main Primary school for me in Slough but I knew the old school buildings had been knocked down, their location was now a housing estate, while the school had been rebuilt on the opposite side of the road. I was eager to see if anything at all remained of the old school.

My first surprise was to find that the old corner store and sweet shop was still in existence. In my school days, it was called Spicer’s stores and it was run by Mr and Mrs Spicer. This store was on the corner of the road just a short way from the school and I’m sure it did a roaring trade from school children popping in after school to purchase sweets, potato puffs, Jubly bars, etc.. Sadly, Mr Spicer passed away while I was still attending the school but the store was still run afterwards by his widow. It was quite heart-warming to see the name of the store today, though I don’t know if the current owners realised the significance of it.

As for the school itself, I was not surprised to see that nothing remained of the old building. A close examination suggested two features that could be remnants of the old location. The school had had a side road used for deliveries and this still seemed to exist.

Apart from this, there were four brick columns which looked slightly out of keeping with the rest of a wall and I figured they may be, just maybe, remains of one of the old school entrances.

Behind the old school, there had been extensive grassed areas which were used as play areas during the summer. Most of this area had been taken up by the new housing estate and also by an open grass recreation area. Part of this grassed area would also have covered the old site of the school swimming pool. Cynically, the thought came to me that perhaps the developers found it too expensive to build houses on the area of the pool and had covered it with grass to make the park area. Interestingly, there was a road in the estate which was called ‘school lane’. This road did not exist in my time and it also does not today lead to the current site of James Elliman School. I can only take this, somewhat nostalgically, as a reference to the old school site.

Following the small disappointment of my old primary school, I retraced my steps back toward the old family house. This meant walking back along Elliman Avenue, up to Baylis Parade, then past the Good Companions pub and turning right onto Hawthorn Avenue.

At the top of Elliman Avenue, I noticed that the old doctors’ surgery was still standing and, by golly, it was still a doctors’ surgery.

Just before the surgery, there used to be a house hidden away by tall bushes. This had been the home of Helen Chivers, a classmate from James Elliman school. Sadly, no trace of this house now remains and the area is now a religious temple.

Baylis Parade was a group of shops serving the local area. It is still in existence though, not surprisingly the shops have changed.

I noticed that one shop, Jay Bee Fabrics, occupied three units. These had been separate shops in my day, one of which ( the left hand one, I believe) had been a cycle shop.

As for the Good Companions Pub, well the building still exists but is no longer a pub. Instead it appears to be a car wash and tyre shop.

Oh well, by now I was resigning myself to seeing more places changed than staying the same.

The next step was perhaps the most exciting of all; visiting the old family home. I walked around beside the garage next to the Good Companions pub, I was pleased to see that this was still a garage. I walked a short way along Hawthorn Crescent when I came upon the first sight which brought on a feeling of nostalgia; it was a roundabout.

Not just any old roundabout, of course, but the odd shaped roundabout that linked Grant Avenue to Hawthorn Crescent. This roundabout we called ‘the egg’ on account of its shape. It was a place where local children would go play football (there wasn’t so many cars in those days). While being pleased to see that the roundabout still exists, I was surprised to see trees growing on it. I don’t recall any trees on it in my day. Perhaps the council had planted trees to stop children playing football there!

The next step was to locate the old house itself. This would be easy as I could remember the house number (15) and it was also the first house in the street to have a room sticking out at the front.

Sure enough the house still existed;

The most noticeable change is that the residents had replaced the front garden with a paved area, presumably to park a car but it seemed their car was still parked on the road outside.

Okay, so I had visited one old school (or the site of it) and the old house. The next step would be to return back to town and make my way to my old secondary school and thence to Langley to visit another old family home and another old primary school.

Back in the town, I walked through the Queensmere shopping centre. This had been built while I was still living in the town and it was still there … but only just.

It was in a very sad state, there were no longer any large stores in the centre (apart from bucket stores such as TK Max and Primark); I noticed that both Marks and Spencer and Debenhams were closed down and the centre, indeed the whole high street, seemed to be full of dubious, fly-by-night cut price establishments. Apart from a massive Tesco and a Boots, there seemed to be nothing that would attract shoppers or visitors into the town centre.

I learned from an employee at my hotel that there have long been plans to demolish the Queensmere Centre but they have yet to come to fruition. If it were to be knocked down I’m not sure what would replace it and it would certainly create a massive gap in the town centre. Another thing I noticed about the Queensmere centre is that it seems to ‘get in the way’; the main thoroughfare through the town is the A4, which now follows the route of Wellington Road. This is to the back of the Queensmere centre. In my day, the A4 had followed the route of Slough High Street. The High Street has been pedestrianised, in fact this happened shortly before I left the town. However, there now seems to be no way to get from the High Street to Wellington Road or vice versa, hence the Queensmere centre seems to hide the High Street from visitors and people travelling along Wellington Road. Which probably does the High Street stores no good at all when it comes to attracting passing trade.

I walked through the Queensmere Centre and suddenly felt the need to stop. It was the scene below which brought this about;

Looking at the image, there seems to be nothing special about it but as I approached this spot, I realised that this was the last place I saw my grandfather alive. He was walking past these stores and waiting for my mother to finish her work at one of them. His wife, my nan, had recently passed away and he looked a very lonely figure. I recalled the incident and how I had stopped myself in my tracks so as not to intrude on his meeting with my mother. Sad to think that none of them are still with us.

Enough reminiscing on sad events.

My next step was to go to my old secondary school site to see how that now looked. I was already aware that the school had changed its name at least a couple of times, so I was partly intrigued to find out what it now called itself. To get to the school, I had to walk right to the end of the High Street, then in m y mind I remembered there had been a short unmade road which led into the park behind the school, from there I should be able to see the back of the school and it would only be a short walk road to the front.

I was really pleased with myself when I came across a short road off to the right, just after the end of the High Street. This, I thought to myself, has the feel of being the right road even though it was now a proper road and had new buildings along and at the end of it. Indeed, the road did lead into the park and the school. The first thing I noticed about the park is that it looked clean and had proper pathways through it. I am not sure it had the proper pathway during my time. As a school, we had used the park as a football pitch, rugby pitch and hockey pitch; all of this came back to me when I noticed the old building we used as changing rooms; these had not been owned by the school but by the local authority. Today, I observed, the former changing rooms are a nursery school!

I took this quick picture of the former changing rooms but I deliberately did not get the building front and centre in the image as there were children and staff working inside at the time.

After pondering over the incongruity of former changing rooms being used as a nursery school, I turned to walk toward and view the rear of my old school. I was pleased to see that the main old building was still standing and still evidently in use. Gone though were the old woodwork and metalwork buildings which had been housed in an annex to the south end of the school. Gone, too, was the old rifle range which had been used by the school’s army cadet troop. In their place stood a much more modern set of buildings.

Also missing was the school hall and music rooms. These had been the most recently built part of the school when I was there but they, too, had been knocked down to make way for a large three storey block.

From the front, the school still retained much of its original façade though I did notice that one of the playgrounds had been utilised in the building one of the modern extensions. The other point of interest that I noted was that my school, Slough Grammar School for Boys, was now called Upton Court Grammar School and they admitted girls as well as boys.

At this point, I realised that I was at a midpoint between our main old home in Grant Avenue and an earlier one in Humber Way in Langley. So I decided to catch a bus to Langley to hunt down that old house and see what it now looked like. At the time we moved there, it was a newly built house on a massive housing estate called Parlaunt Park. It was on a road called Humber Way but from what I remembered, Humber Way was split up into a lot of small side roads and the main Humber Way itself was a grassy strip running between rows of houses instead of a tarmac road. Anyway, let’s see if what I recalled would resemble anything like what was there today.

I do not have many memories of our time in Humber Way, I do recall being there during the bad winter of 1962/63 when the snow piled high and I went out the back door and fel straight down into a huge snowdrift, I also remember all the neighbours clubbing together to build huge bonfires each November 5th, I also have a memory of a fish ’n’ chip van coming round to the houses and I vaguely recall the wallpaper in our hallway having stripes upto halfway from the floor, then a row of large scallop shapes followed by a plain border above that. I also remember, as it comes back to me now, that a member of the family at the end of our little cul-de-sac was killed at work by a flying spark from a furnace and, also coming back, I remember my best friend, Alan Spencer, who lived a short way up the road until his parents decided to move their family to Australia.

When I got off the bus, I had to spend a short while to get my bearings. There were a lot of houses which had been built after we had left the area. What had been wide open fields leading up to the Ford factory, was now a massive housing estate and, I doubted that the factory still existed. Once I had my bearings, I knew I had to take a short walk down an alleyway to get to the back of our old house, then retrace my steps and walk around to the front.

There was not much to see at the rear as subsequent owners had erected a large fence and gate. I do not recall exactly what was there when we lived there but I seem to feel it was a chain wire fence and a gate.

The front of the house was much more interesting.

I don’t think we had the covered entrance hall but otherwise the front of the house looked much like it did in our time. Even the ‘road’ was still a grass area.

While we were living in Langley, I attended two primary schools. I was just about to make my way to the first of them when I remembered that the second would probably be nearer. So I decided to visit that one first. This school had been called Parlaunt Park Primary School. It had been built to cater for the children of families moving onto the new estate, it had, of course, not been built in time for the first families, which is why I had first attended another school in the area. In fact, I had only attended the school for one term and I have the dubious pleasure of being the very first pupil to ever leave the school. Consequently, I do not remember much about the school, except that, at the time, it was newly built, it consisted of two white ‘C’ shaped buildings (one for juniors and one for infants) and that the school bully was a boy called Trevor Stokes.

When I arrived at the location of the school, I was very disappointed. The school had changed its name, not much of it could be seen from the road and what I could see did not look anything like the two buildings I recalled from memory. This was perhaps the lowest point of my afternoon of memories.

From this school, I walked back to the main road, Parlaunt Park Road, which was a dual carriage way between Langley High Street and the housing estate. As I walked along it, it brought back a memory of walking with my mother along this road and having cotton wool in my ears to stop them bleeding.

I recall that seemed to experience a lot of problems with bleeding ears, though I cannot remember now why that was so.

Once on Langley High Street, I had to try to recall my journey to this other school, which was my first primary school and had been called Langley Marish School. All I can recall of the journey was walking (sometimes running) down a long alleyway with hedges on both sides which ran from the school to the High Street. As I walked up the street, I suddenly saw a building which looked familiar. It was called Marish Court and beside kit was an alleyway with a large hedge; I realised almost at once that this was the alleyway I had used to get to school.

A quick walk along the alleyway revealed the school and it was still called Langley Marish.

Again, the school had changed, new buildings had been added. I could not recognise any of it from the front but once I walked down the side of the school, I recognised a familiar sight. Although it was now used as a staff car park, the rear school playground was still in place and around it, some of the buildings seemed familiar.

This was to be the last visit of the afternoon. I knew that I was also close to the hotel I had booked to stay in. So I decided to call it a day and made my way back to a warm bath to soak and ease my aching feet.

On reflection, much had changed in Slough since I had left but that’s only to be expected after 40 years. I found Slough to be a very depressing place not because things had changed since I lived there but more that most of the changes did not seem to have been positive ones. True, there were several modern buildings in the town but they often stood as empty as many of the old ones and, indeed, much of the building work was surrounded by empty derelict land that perhaps someone had bought with the intention of building on it but had not yet done so. In some ways, large open spaces in a town or city can be a good thing but only if those spaces are green and natural, which is not the case with the open spaces in Slough town centre.