Slough

Wikipedia contributors · CC BY-SA · EN · 04/10/2026

Slough is a town in Berkshire, England, in the Thames Valley, 20 mi west of central London and 19 mi north-east of Reading, at the intersection of the M4, M40 and M25 motorways. It is part of the historic county of Buckinghamshire. In 2021, the population of the town was 143,184. The wider Borough of Slough had a population of 158,500.

Slough's population is one of the most ethnically diverse in the United Kingdom, attracting people from across the country and the world for labour since the 1920s, which has helped shape it into a major trading centre. In 2021, 46.9% of the population was Asian, 35.9% White, 7.5% Black, 4% Mixed, 1.2% Arab and 4.5% of other ethnic heritage.

Other than London, Slough has the highest concentration of global company headquarters in the UK. Blackberry, McAfee, Burger King, DHL, Telefonica and Lego have head offices in the town. Slough Trading Estate is the largest industrial estate in single private ownership in Europe, with over 17,000 jobs in 400 businesses.

History

The town's 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. 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 passed through Slough and Salt Hill, later absorbed into Slough, as locations 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 was 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, i.e. protected historic structures. There are

Four Grade I: St Laurence's Church (Upton), St Mary the Virgin Church, Langley, Baylis House and Godolphin Court

Seven Grade II*: St Mary's Church (Upton-cum-Chalvey), Upton Court, the Kederminster and Seymour Almshouses in Langley, St Peter's Church (Chalvey), Ostrich Inn (Colnbrook) and King John's Palace (Colnbrook)

Grade II listed structures include four milestones, Beech, Oak and Linden Houses at Upton Hospital, St Ethelbert's Church, Slough and Slough railway station.

In 1918, a large area of agricultural land to the west of Slough developed as an army motor repair depot, 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. On the 13th, 5 people were killed in an air raid, the deadliest raid on Slough. 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 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.

The old Slough library opened in November 1974, named after Alderman Robert Taylor in recognition of his contribution to the library service. The library was officially opened by the Mayor, Councillor DR Peters, in May 1975. It was demolished in May 2017 as part of the programme of redevelopment in the town centre.

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 plan for the large-scale redevelopment of the town centre as a focus and cultural quarter for the creative media, information and communications industries created a mixed-use complex, multi-functional buildings, visual landmarks and a public space in the Thames Valley. Approval was given for the £400 million project by Slough Borough Council's planning committee in July 2009, and 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 were due to remain in the town 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, planned to spend £600 million over the following 20 years on the estate. This was 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 was claimed that the plan would create more than 4,100 new jobs and contribute around £100m a year to Slough's economy. If both plans went ahead, nearly £1 billion would be spent on redeveloping Slough over the next 20 years.

In 2009, Herschel Park, known as Upton Park until 1949, named for astronomer William Herschel, was 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 opened in May 2011.

Redevelopment on this scale has been strongly criticised by conservation groups. The Twentieth Century Society has stated that

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

In February 2025, it was reported that the council was considering a number of options to merge with larger local authorities, including joining a London borough or becoming part of the Greater London Authority.

Geography

Slough is 20 mi west of Charing Cross, central London, 2 mi north of Windsor, 5 mi east of Maidenhead, 11 mi south-east of High Wycombe and 19 mi north-east of the county town of Reading. Slough is within the Greater London Urban Area and on the border with London Borough of Hillingdon and London Borough of Hounslow. Heathrow Airport is 5 miles away. Nearby towns are Uxbridge to the northeast and Beaconsfield to the north.

Most of the area that now makes up Slough was anciently part of Buckinghamshire. Poyle was historically in Middlesex. The town developed by the expansion and amalgamation of villages along the Great West Road. Over the years Slough has expanded greatly, incorporating a number of different villages. Original villages that are now suburbs of Slough include Chalvey, Cippenham, Colnbrook, Langley, Poyle, Upton, and Wexham.

Named neighbourhoods include Brands Hill, Britwell, Huntercombe, Manor Park, Salt Hill, Upton Lea and Windsor Meadows. The urban area merges into the neighbouring parishes of Burnham, a small area of Taplow near Cippenham, Farnham Royal and Stoke Poges which remain in the county of Buckinghamshire and Datchet which is in Berkshire. Eton is narrowly buffered by the Jubilee River and by green space (mainly the college playing fields) from part of Slough, and the two areas formerly formed the Eton birth, marriages and deaths registration district.

Climate

The nearest Met Office weather observing station to Slough is Heathrow Airport, about 5 mi east of Slough town centre. This part of the Thames Valley is notable for generally having the warmest daytime summer temperatures on average in the British Isles. Typically, according to 1981–2010 normals, the average high temperature in July is 23.5 °C (74.3 °F.)

Rainfall is low compared to most of the British Isles, with under 600 mm annually, and 105 days reporting over 1 mm of rain.

Demography

According to the 2021 census, Slough is a large town with a population of 158,400 of which 46.9% of the population was Asian, 35.9% White, 7.5% Black, 4% Mixed, 1.2% Arab and 4.5% of other ethnic heritage. This makes the town one of the most ethnically diverse local authorities in the country outside of London.

Despite its diverse population, English is the most spoken language in 2021, with over 110,212 citing English as their first language. Those stating other languages is significantly lower due to the large shares of the British Asian and Black population speaking English as their first language. Aside from English, the most commonly spoken languages are Punjabi, Polish, and Urdu.

Figures from the 2021 UK census showed that 32% of Slough's population identified as Christian, 29.4% as Muslim, 11.4% as Sikh, 7.8% as Hindu, 0.5% as Buddhist, 0.1% as Jewish, 0.5% as having other religions, 13% as having no religion and 5.4% did not answer the question.

Compared with the 2011 UK census, the percentage of Slough residents identifying as Muslim increased by 6.1%, the largest increase of any religious group in Slough, while those identifying as Christian fell from 41.2% to 32.0%, with those identifying as having no religion rising slightly from 12.1% to 13.1%.

Governance

There is one main tier of local government covering Slough, at unitary authority level: Slough Borough Council, which is based at Observatory House in the town centre. Most of the urban area is unparished, although some of the suburbs are included in civil parishes, including Britwell and Wexham Court.

Administrative history

Slough was historically a hamlet in the parish of Upton, also known as Upton-cum-Chalvey, in Buckinghamshire. Until 1863 it was administered by the parish vestry and manorial courts, in the same way as most rural areas. As Slough began developing into a town, the need for more urban forms of local government grew. In 1863 a local government district was established for Slough, covering part of the parish of Upton-cum-Chalvey (including the old village of Upton) and a smaller part of the neighbouring parish of Stoke Poges. The town was then governed by an elected local board.

Such local government districts were converted into urban districts under the Local Government Act 1894. In 1900 the Slough urban district was enlarged to absorb most of the residual parts of the old Upton-cum-Chalvey parish that had been outside the urban district, including Chalvey. The urban district was further enlarged in 1930, when it was significantly expanded to take in most of the neighbouring parish of Langley (including the village), the Salt Hill area from the parish of Farnham Royal, and the Cippenham area from the parish of Burnham. In 1938 the urban district was incorporated to become a municipal borough.

In 1974, the Municipal Borough of Slough was replaced by a larger non-metropolitan district with borough status called Slough. The enlarged district gained the Britwell and Wexham Court areas, and was transferred from Buckinghamshire to Berkshire. The borough was enlarged in 1995 to take in Colnbrook with Poyle.

In 1998 Slough Borough Council became a unitary authority when Berkshire County Council was abolished and the borough council took on the former county council's functions in the borough.

Since 2015, Slough has had a Youth Parliament to represent the views of younger people.

Town twinning

Slough is twinned with:

Montreuil, France (since 1988)

Economy

Before the 19th century, the main businesses of Slough were brickfields and agriculture. The bricks for the building of Eton College were made in Slough. Later, as the Great West Road traffic increased, inns and pubs sprang up along the road to service the passing trade. Until the town developed as an industrial area, nurseries were prominent in the local economy; the Cox's Orange Pippin apple was first raised in Colnbrook (not then within Slough) around 1825, and the dianthus "Mrs Sinkins Pink" was first raised at some point between 1868 and 1883 by John Sinkins, the master of the Eton Union Workhouse, which lay in Slough.

In the mid-19th century, the only major employer apart from the brickfields was James Elliman, who started as a draper in Chandos Street. In 1847, he changed business and manufactured his Elliman's Embrocation and Royal Embrocation horse liniment at factories in Wellington Street and Chandos Street. Elliman became a major benefactor to the town, and is remembered today in the names of local roads and schools.

Source and attribution

Adapted from “Slough” by English Wikipedia contributors. Main paragraphs and sections are retained; tables, reference markers and technical markup are omitted. This is an encyclopedic adaptation, not a personal review. Original revision and contributor history ↗. Text is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗. Check current visitor access, tickets and transport with the relevant operator.