Old Photos Create Memories

Transcript

Old photos bring back memories for readers

Over the last few weeks I’ve had a number of responses on the subject of my mystery photo which showed the Slough Social Centre, Timbertown and the beginnings of Buckingham Avenue East.
Also shown was part of the Slough Trading Estate, including two factories; Bestobell Aviation and High Duty Alloys, which several readers remembered in the 1950s.

I was especially pleased to hear from Ken Bryant, who was born at Timbertown in 1925 and lived there until 1928 when his family moved into a house in Buckingham Avenue East. Ken tells me that the timber huts were demolished in the 1930s and were replaced by Nissen Huts. These were used by the Pioneer Corps, who serviced and lit the smoke screen burners situated in the roads surrounding the Trading Estate.

After the war, these huts were taken over by squatters, due to the shortage of housing. Ken remembers witnessing firemen fighting a blaze in one of the huts and subsequently learned that two young children had been killed in the fire.

Ken also explained that the Slough Social Centre had come into being from the ideas of Sir Noel Mobbs, with the establishment of the Slough Trading Estate in Farnham Road. The Social Centre swimming pool was at the end of the Bryant family garden.

Ken also remembers a building being erected adjacent to Whitby Road, which became the Slough Youth Centre and had two separate clubs, one for boys and one for girls. These were under the leadership of Freddie Flower and a Miss Timmins.

When Ken joined the youth club in 1938, there were many activities to choose from, including table tennis, billiards and woodwork lessons. There was also a fully equipped gymnasium, with wrestling and boxing.

In the early 1940s, the youth club building was destroyed by fire and completely rebuilt.
This was later redeveloped to include a new health centre to cater for people working on the trading estate, which explains the title of ‘Slough Health Centre’ on my postcard – and the reason for my original query.

This was only a small part of the Slough Social Centre complex. Another reader told me that the Social Centre had originally consisted of four buildings. One of these contained a hall with a stage and was used for concerts, dances and dance competitions during the 1940s and ’50s.
Another building housed the Slough Industrial Health Service (or SIHS for short, but the ‘powers-that-be’ did not like that as the letters were the wrong way round). Anyone who worked in the Slough Trading Estate could be seen by a doctor there, whether they were taken ill or had an industrial injury.

■ Many thanks to Ken and other readers who have sent me further information on this and my other articles – I am always very pleased to hear from you!

■ FLASHBACK: Slough Social Centre c.1937 (Slough History online)

■ FIRST HOMES: Timbertown during the mid-1920s.

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