Bower Way

A Memory of Cippenham.

Way back in the late 1930s and early 1940s I lived in Westgate Crescent and used to walk the length of Bower Way every day to Cippenham school, carrying my gas mask in a cardboard box. I used to be friends with Tony Rimmer who lived in that street. There used to be a passage way to a large Dry Cleaning company on the right at the school end of Bower Way. I left the area just after WW11 but I remember the rationing, the Anderson shelter my dad built in our back garden and the nights we spent in it during the air raids; how stony the soil was and how we had to walk everywhere except for the bus to Slough. Cars were few and far between and bicycles were the main form of transport. I recall cycling to the Food Office in Slough along the Bath Road, competing for road space with Brengun carriers and light tanks, to fetch bottles of cod liver oil and concentrated orange juice and dried milk in tins for my younger brother and sister. I could not have been more than seven years old!

Bower Way always seemed to have a lot of dogs, at least there was plenty of evidence that they were in abundance. Half way down there was a traffic island in the road. I think it was the only island I ever saw in the area. I also recall the narrow lane that started at the top of Bower Way and opened out into an open green space alongside a stream over which there was a sturdy bridge. This lane passed the scout hut and a couple of very large houses on the left and set back from the road.