Chartered Surveyors Bracknell Berkshire

Approximate Population: 50,131

Bracknel, Berkshire was designated a new town in 1949, in the aftermath of the Second World War. The site was originally a village-come-small-town in the civil parish of Warfield in the Easthampstead Rural District. Very little of the original Bracknell is left. The location was chosen over White Waltham, an alternative possibility, because the Bracknell site avoided encroaching on good quality agricultural land. It had the additional advantage of being on a railway line.

The new town was planned for 25,000 people; it was intended to occupy over 1,000 hectares of land on and around ‘Old Bracknell’ in the area now covered by Priestwood, Easthampstead, Bullbrook and Harman’s Water. The existing town centre and industrial areas were to be retained with new industry brought in to provide jobs. However, the town has since expanded far beyond its intended size into farmland to the south, and major expansion is now, as of 2008, under way to the west of the town at Peacock Farm, and on the site of the former RAF Staff College.

The town centre is a 1960s design, and considered by many to be in need of a major refurbishment. The Borough Council is therefore working in partnership with the Bracknell Regeneration Partnership (Legal & General and Schroders) to regenerate the town centre with new shops and facilities to be built.

At the heart of most Bracknell neighbourhoods is a church, a small parade of shops, a primary school, a community centre and a pub, there is a church in Crown Wood School (part of Easthampstead Baptist Church www.ebc-bracknell.org). The neighbourhoods varied in size from 3000 to 9000. Pedestrianisation was a key idea, as was the construction of a ring road, and segregation of industrial areas from residential areas.

A feature of a number of the estates that causes great confusion for outsiders and newcomers alike is the fact that streets only have names, not titles – in Birch Hill, Crown Wood, Great Hollands and others there is no ‘Road’, ‘Avenue’, ‘Street’, just ‘Frobisher’, ‘Jameston’, ‘Juniper’, ‘Jevington’. The residential streets are, however, named in alphabetical order starting in Great Hollands, with As, through Ds, such as Donnybrook, in Hanworth, Js, such as ‘Jameston’ and ‘Jevington’ in Birch Hill, and beyond. The exceptions are streets in the Wimpey Homes area of the town, where street names such as Hornby Avenue and Pakenham Road can be found.