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Slough Trading Estate

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Coordinates:51°31′16″N0°37′37″W/ 51.521°N 0.627°W/51.521; -0.627
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Slough Trading Estate:
aerial view looking north-west

TheSlough Trading Estate,founded inSloughinBuckinghamshirein 1920, was an earlybusiness parkin Britain. According to the estate's owners and operators,Segro,[1]Slough Trading Estate consists of 486 acres (1.97 km2) of commercial property in Slough and provides 7,500,000 sq ft (700,000 m2) of accommodation to 500 businesses and has a working population of about 20,000 people. Slough Trading Estate is the largest industrial estate in single private ownership in Europe.[2]There are over 600 buildings. The estate is home to 400 tenants from countries including the US, France, Italy, Japan, Germany and South Korea. Companies using the park include Fiat Group Automobiles,Centrica,Hibu,Electrolux,GSK,Mars Confectionery,Akzo Nobel,Virgin Media,O2,AxFlow UK, the datacentre operatorNetwork-iandOKI Printing Solutions.It is also home to important small, medium and large businesses.

The estate's power station supplies heat and power to local customers by burning waste.[3]

History

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Slough Power Station as seen fromWindsor CastlewithEton Collegechapel in the foreground
Few original buildings remain on Slough Trading Estate: these were occupied byFairey Aviation.
Slough Power Station (2005)
Slough Trading Estate sign

In June 1918, land to the west of Slough (now inBerkshire) and adjacent to theGreat Western Railwaymain line, mainly forming part ofCippenhamCourt Farm[4]but also including the site of an isolation hospital,[5]was bought by the government to form a motor repair depot for army transport. The depot was intended to receive broken down vehicles by train from the battlefront, repair them, and return them to service.[6]

The project was not regarded as a success. The depot was believed to be so urgent that construction work (eventually by construction companySir Robert McAlpine)[7]began in July 1918 without harvesting the crops on the land, but the site was still under construction when the armistice was agreed in November 1918.[8]

Although the depot's fundamental purpose went with the end of the war,General Jan Smutsproposed a post-war use for the depot which was implemented. Rather than scrapping the many army surplus vehicles, they were sent to Slough for repair prior to sale.[9]Because of this use, for many years (until at least the 1980s), the site was known locally and colloquially as 'the dump', and at the time of the depot's development it was also known as 'The White Elephant'.

Relations between management and workforce were so poor (partly due to the militancy ofWal Hannington) that in April 1920 the entire workforce was sacked.[10][11]TheGovernment Surplus Disposal Boardsold the 2.7 square kilometre (600 acre) site and its contents (17,000 used cars, trucks and motorcycles, and 170,000 square metres (1.8 million sq ft) of covered workshops) for over seven million pounds.Sir Percival Perry,who had effectively established the British operations of theFord Motor Companyand who had been appointed Assistant Controller of the UK government'sAgricultural Machinery Departmentduring the war,[12]and SirNoel Mobbs,led the group of investors who acquired the depot, establishing theSlough Trading Company Limited and Reduced.

Slough Trading Company Act 1925
Act of Parliament
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Long titleAn Act for providing for the regulation of certain roads on the Slough Trading Estate and for other purposes.
Citation15 & 16 Geo. 5.c. xcv
Dates
Royal assent7 August 1925
Text of statute as originally enacted

Repair and sale of ex-army vehicles continued until theSlough Trading Company Act 1925(15 & 16 Geo. 5.c. xcv) was passed allowing the company (renamed in 1926 toSlough Estates Ltd) to establish anindustrial estate.The existing army buildings were tenanted as factories, and additional units were built. Those on theBath Roadand Farnham Road frontages were designed with fundamentally uniform simpleArt Decooffices on the front. Shared facilities were provided for workforce and employers, including a fire station, restaurant,[13]shops and banks, a largecommunity centre(1937) and the Slough Industrial Health Service (1947).[8]

Early businesses established on the trading estate includedCitroën(1926),Gillette,Johnson & JohnsonandHigh Duty Alloys.[14]In 1932, they were joined byMars LtdandBerlei (UK) Limited.In late 1933 the Slough Estates Journal reported there were 'more than 150 companies' based on the estate.[15]

As the trading estate grew despite thedepressionof the 1920s and 1930s, people were attracted from all over the country to come and find work in Slough but the fast increase in population resulted in a shortage of housing. One solution was the construction of Timbertown, an estate of wooden single storey houses built adjacent to the site occupied by the Community Centre and now occupied byHerschel Grammar School.From the outside, the houses looked like an army barracks, but inside they were spacious and comfortable – with three bedrooms, a bathroom, a big kitchen and a living room. At the start, Timbertown was well cared for a popular community, with a shop, social hut and even a Sunday school but the buildings soon started to deteriorate. The wooden houses were never intended to be permanent and Timbertown was finally demolished in the 1930s to make way for new buildings.

From the late 1950s the estate became home toGerry Anderson's AP Films, producing a string of successful puppet series forATV.

In 1963 Ford set up Ford Advanced Vehicles on the estate to build theFord GT40racing sports car with design input fromEric BroadleyofLola Cars,who subsequently fell out with Ford and used the factory (which was in his company's name) to re-establish his independent operation. Ford moved to another factory on the Estate.

Until 1973, the estate had a railway directly linking the factories to Britain's railway system. A passenger service ran fromPaddingtonandSlough stationsto a separate station (accessed by a spur from the main line, separate from the freight access to the estate),[16]until 1956.[17]

In January 2008, the estate'spower stationwas sold toScottish and Southern Energy.[18]As of 2018 the plant is being partially demolished for replacement by the Slough Multifuel facility, which will generate about 50 MW 'through burning waste-derived fuels made from various sources'.[19]

Geography

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Slough Trading Estate has aLocal nature reserveon the Western border of the estate calledHaymill Valley.[20]

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In 1937, English poetJohn Betjemanwrote his poem "Slough"in protest against the expansion of the Slough Trading Estate. The poem bemoans the loss of the area's rural character, and pillories English society's increasing consumerism and the sweatshop conditions caused by large-scale industrial development. An excerpt reads:" Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough / It isn't fit for humans now.... "

The original series ofThe Officeis set on Slough Trading Estate. The opening sequence shows several locations in Slough and the Crossbow House building on the Trading Estate where fictional paper merchants Wernham Hogg are supposedly located. It is also referenced in the song "Slough" from the 2016 filmDavid Brent: Life on the Road.

See also

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References

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  1. ^Helen Murray."Slough Trading Estate".sloughte.Archived fromthe originalon 22 August 2008.
  2. ^Slough Estates petition to Parliament, Crossrail bill 2005–06
  3. ^Slough Multifuel webpage
  4. ^p28,Slough – A Century of Change,Peter Burgess and Judith Hunter, Nonsuch pocket edition, 2005
  5. ^p62,Around Slough in old photographs,Judith Hunter and Karen Hunter, Budding Books, 1998
  6. ^"Slough Trading Estate".everything2.
  7. ^"Arborfield Local History Society - WW1 - Slough Motor Depot a White Elephant".arborfieldhistory.org.uk.
  8. ^abp 109,The History of Slough,Maxwell Fraser, Slough Corporation, 1973
  9. ^p. 109,The History of Slough,Maxwell Fraser, Slough Corporation, 1973
  10. ^"Foreign News: Wal's Work".TIME.20 February 1939. Archived fromthe originalon 14 December 2008.
  11. ^Wal Hannington and the Slough Soviet 1920
  12. ^"Ford in Europe: The First Hundred Years".seriouswheels.
  13. ^p118,Around Slough in old photographs,Judith Hunter and Karen Hunter, Budding Books, 1998
  14. ^p15,Memories of Slough,True North Books, 1999
  15. ^Cassell, Michael (1991).Long Lease!, The Story of Slough Estates 1920 – 1991.London: Pencorp Books.ISBN9781870092029.
  16. ^map V and caption,Slough to Newbury,Vic Mitchell and Keith Smith, Middleton Press, Midhurst, 2000
  17. ^picture 80 and caption,Slough: A Pictorial History,Judith Hunter & Isobel Thompson, Phillimore & Co, Chichester, 1991
  18. ^"Acquisition of Slough Heat and Power completed".Scottish and Southern Energy.Archived fromthe originalon 12 January 2008.
  19. ^"Slough Multifuel".SSE.Retrieved23 April2020.
  20. ^"Magic Map Application".Magic.defra.gov.uk.Retrieved16 April2017.
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51°31′16″N0°37′37″W/ 51.521°N 0.627°W/51.521; -0.627

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