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Bishops Green community photographs
By nealejames | March 15, 2007
We started work today on an exhibition about a regeneration project in West Berkshire, which will see the redevelopment of a whole estate in a village called Bishops Green. The community that live on the Ashlands Estate will gradually be rehoused in new properties where once pre-fabricated housing stood. The original housing was built just after World War 2 and still stand in sight of huge aircraft hangers several miles away that belonged to the infamous Greenham Common US airbase, home to American B52 bombers, for years the focus of peace protests by female activists. The intention for this housing was for it to last twenty years, just about long enough for more substantial construction work to take place. But, like many areas of Britain where this happened, the bulldozers left in 1955 and never returned. Until now. We’re spending several visits photographing the people of Ashlands and their houses. Most of the new generation of dwellers seem quite excited by modern housing and better facilities, since anti social behaviour has dogged parts of the estate for quite some time. Those that have made this their home for over fifty years, who have roots more deeply set, are not quite so keen to see the demolition process. This is Austin, a widower, who has lived in the house that stands behind him for 52 years, sitting on the rubble of former neighbours’ houses.
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