В Хай-Уайкомбе в 1957 году началась системная сноска трущоб и их превращение в промышленную зону

The first slum-clearance programme in the district, and in the country according to Mr Frederick Skull, Hon. Curator of Wycombe Museum in 1934, was at West Wycombe in the early 1930s, after the village had been acquired by the National Trust in 1929. However, this was not actually the clearance of a slum, but the refurbishment of the dwellings, and did not involve the permanent re-housing of people. The Housing Act of 1930 marked the start of systematic demolition schemes. It empowered local authorities ‘to declare slum clearance areas, to compulsorily purchase unfit properties, and to receive subsidies for re-housing displaced residents in new council housing’, marking the start of systematic efforts to demolish and clear slums, and redevelop the area. In High Wycombe, the first clearance of a slum was in Newland, west of White Hart Street, the site now being within the Eden Shopping Mall, in 1934. The inhabitants were relocated to the developing council housing estate at Castlefield. WW2 then intervened and it was not until the mid-1950s that national attention returned to the problem, the Slum Clearance (Compensation) Act being passed in 1956. This was followed a year later by the Housing Act 1957, which imposed a statutory duty on every local authority to conduct periodic reviews of housing conditions in their districts at least every five years. They were then required to submit programmes to the Minister for the ‘clearance, demolition, or closure of unfit houses, or their improvement where feasible’. This could include compulsory purchase of unfit properties, demolition, and redevelopment, with obligations to re-house displaced persons. Wycombe Town Council responded to this by notifying the Minister of Housing of their twenty-year plan for the clearance of unfit housing, with an initial detailed five-year plan for slum clearance. Following a request from the Minister, the Council agreed to ‘make every effort’ to clear unfit houses within 15 years, instead of the 20 years originally proposed. The first programme designated for clearance was of the area around Brook St, this being agreed at a Council meeting on January 15,1957. Brook Street Brook Street is to the west of Wycombe town centre, a street off the Oxford Road and linking it with Westbourne Street to the south-west. The street had been originally developed in the 1870s, when the dwellings which were there in the early 1950s would have been built. At that time there some 60 households living in Brook St, together with the ‘general stores’ of Mrs P Mansbridge, and the Chairmaker’s Arms pub, licensee Henry Garland. The decorator’s merchants of E. Milner, Wycombe’s go-to store for paint and wallpaper at that time, were located on the corner of Brook St and Oxford Road. Brook Street did achieve national fame in May 1936 when it was used as the setting for a scene in the film ‘A Song of Freedom’. The Bucks Free Press reported ‘The voice of Paul Robeson was heard and the famous film artist was seen by hundreds of people in the vicinity of Brook Street, on Sunday, when he took part in scenes ‘shot’ for a new film now being made at the Beaconsfield studios.’ The Brook St Clearance Area The area to be cleared comprised ‘land and premises – with the exception of the Chairmakers Arm’s public house and an upholsterer’s at the rear of 22 & 23 Westbourne Street – bounded on the north by Brook St, on the east by Ship St, on the south by Ship St and the Corporation’s highway depot, and on the west by Westbourne St. The Medical Officer of the Council had declared the houses as ‘being unfit for human habitation and injurious to the health of the inhabitants’. Although the Chairmaker’s Arms was not in such a condition, it was eventually included in the demolition programme ‘to allow the scheme to be carried out efficiently’. The building occupied by the decorator’s merchants E. Milner was not included in the clearance scheme but was subsequently demolished in the 1970s. Inevitably the clearance programme raised many objections, necessitating a Public Enquiry. This was held on May 14, 1957, with the Ministry’s Inspector Mr N Boothroyd. After hearing the evidence, he toured the area, with Brook St at that time ‘standing gaunt and deserted, its terraced houses showing only crumbling walls, boarded windows and the dust of many months’. Boothroyd inspected each of the properties involved, then allowed the clearance programme to go ahead. Demolition work began in June 1957, initially of the northern side of the street which bordered the river Wye, then still an open waterway, and the Oxford Road. Before the southern side followed, good use was made of the area already demolished when over 100 Civil Defence volunteers moved in for a full-scale exercise in rescue operations in what became ‘houses destroyed by enemy bombing’! Re-use of the cleared area So how was the cleared area to be used. The Town Council had still not announced its plans for the redevelopment. Originally it was intended to build new houses there to rehouse the displaced families, as it was felt that they would not welcome transfer from their own locality to new estates on the outskirts of town, Micklefield being an example of such an area. But experience had shown that in fact they settled down happily in their new homes. One suggestion under consideration was for the area to be used partly for the building of flats and partly for a new council depot. A complicating factor in developing the area was the possibility that the river Wye could be culverted, this issue generating considerable correspondence in the Bucks Free Press in 1958/59 for and against its implementation. Beyond dispute was that the river was a depository for rubbish and had become badly contaminated, one correspondent of repute in the town commenting that the “river sometimes runs bright blue”! It was some 18 months before any firm news about the future of Wycombe’s first slum clearance area began to emerge from the Town Council. Late in 1958 a large notice appeared in the cleared area, easily readable by those proceeding along Oxford Road, proclaiming ‘Industrial Sites for Disposal’. Individual plots of land in the area were being leased out to different companies, which included Norman Reeves (Motors) Ltd, motor dealers and garage proprietors, and Globe and Simpson Ltd, dealers and distributors for motor accessories and electrical equipment. Councillor Sydney A Goulborn, chairman of the clearance area development committee, reported that the area would bring in an annual rental income of at least £2,085, plus income from the rates for the properties. He also stated that many lessons had been learned from the Brook Street clearance scheme which were being applied to subsequent slum clearance programmes.