| Date | 15 March 2013 |
|---|---|
| Source | Slough Observer |
| Reference | VP-0062 |
| Volume | Views of the Past |
| Collection | Views of the Past |
Transcript
Poorest place in town
HIS week I want to look at one of the poorest areas in Windsor in the 19th Century which was known as South Place.
In the 1820s James Bedborough purchased land which he redeveloped into the Clarence Crescent Estate.
Clarence Crescent boasted some of the most luxurious accommodation in Windsor and was laid out around a subscription garden. In stark contrast South Place was one of the poorest areas in Windsor.
South Place consisted of two rows of terrace cottages (a total of 42 buildings) which were constructed by James Bedborough in 1828. These were built to cater for the demand for cheaper housing for Windsor’s poor.
The demand was so great that the buildings were already occupied illegally before they were completed.
The smallest of these houses consisted only of two rooms – one upstairs and another downstairs.
These houses opened straight into the street without a hallway and straight into the upstairs room without a landing.
A small amount of these houses had two rooms on each floor. The majority of these cottages had very little sanitation such as running water or pumps, though six buildings had enclosed yards with shared communal privies.
When the wealthy properties of Clarence Crescent were completed in 1829, the houses of South Place which backed onto the crescent had their windows bricked up and were deprived of any daylight within the properties.
The sanitation of the South Place properties backing onto Clarence Crescent was often compromised by the open sewers which led from the Crescent to the Clewer Ditch.
This reflected a similar pattern in other poor areas in Windsor such as Bier Lane (now River Street) and its adjacent courts, George Street (now the area covered by the Station Approach) and Clewer Lane. These sanitary conditions led to frequent outbreaks of typhus and smallpox.
These streets contained areas of slum houses which continued to become more dilapidated and the rundown area of George Street was cleared as part of Prince Albert’s planned regeneration of Windsor.
The dwellings were replaced by the open areas adjacent to the Windsor Great Western Railway Station. In the mid-1920s, the dilapidated buildings of Bier Lane and its surrounding alleyways and courts were cleared to make way for car parks which still survive to this day. The cottages of South Place were demolished in 1969 to make way for the Ward Royal development.
HIDDEN BY LUXURY: Clarence Crescent concealed the slums of South Place
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