For those familiar with this town, my title today may seem a little unreal. Poor old Bracknell as we know it today was designed around a village, which according to my Dad’s old atlas (circa 1935) had a population of just 2,696. Following World War II it was one of the places designed to cater for a displaced population and today’s town began to take its present shape in the late fifties and early sixties.

It was an early town to have ‘precincts’ instead of a traditional High Street, where shoppers could roam the town along the pavement free of road traffic. In subsequent years, neighbouring towns developed their shopping centres by which time the standards had been raised – they had air conditioning, often good aesthetics with complimentary leisure facilities. But this seems to have passed poor old Bracknell by – it’s a good local example of functional ‘sixties architecture with little to commend it.

When all the houses were built here, employment came here too, and by the ‘eighties the town boasted several multinational employers, particularly those in the IT sector. By that time, architecture was looking up somewhat and today I managed to capture a bit of the old and the more modern with an old pub lurking below an office block.

Photoshop:
Cropped and Resized
Verticals straightened with Transform Tool
Darkened using Levels
Framed using # F4F2E5


On 25 October last year; ‘Family Outing’