Did you know that there used to be a Tesco inside the Queensmere shopping centre in Slough? This was back in the 1970s, and it would have been where the school uniform shop ‘Diffusion’ and the £5 store ‘Vintage Noir’ is (next to B&M, opposite The Works and The Body Shop).
Slough locals have inspired this post. Their tales of this Tesco in a local Facebook group painted such a vivid picture, I just had to share.
“Tesco was next to C&A. I loved the toy department downstairs. I remember the tobacco kiosk at the entrance. Does anyone remember those Kinder Surprise like things they sold? They were round, quite big. The top was transparent & had sweets in it & below it had a toy. They were fantastic. Sold upstairs not in toy area. HMV would form half of the Tesco space when it moved on & All Sports the other half. The latter kept the Tesco stairs that went down to their part of shop.” Thomas J.
“I remember going in there with my nan – her racing to get in to get a ticket out of the machine for the deli counter queue!” Stevens H.
“I worked there as a Saturday girl before I left school. They made us wear horrible tan tights as part of the uniform and we had to pull the shopping down manually, no moving belts then at the tills, really hard on your shoulders” Haggerty N.
“We used to shop there Sat morning. Missus would go to the Chelsea Coffee House for a cuppa and I would go for a quick pint in the Kingfisher, then home – ahh good old days” Ballantyne C.
“I worked there and may have been one of the first multi skilled staff as they put me everywhere. Checkouts both on the till and supervisor, cheese and cold meat counter, stacking shelves, even the cash office. Only contracted for 8 hours so learnt a lot very quickly.” Shelley L.
I first noticed the floor inside Vintage Noir when it was a pop-up Toys R Us store in 2014 (HMV previously but they had carpet over the tiles). It looked so old but familiar, that I took a photo of it and asked in the Slough Facebook group. And they confirmed this was the original Tesco floor.
Here’s a close-up – do you recognise it?
Over in Diffusion next door, which used to be All Sports, they have stairs down to a lower floor which indeed looks like Tesco flooring.
“There was a downstairs…one side stairs, the other side escalator …there is a school shop there now” Smith J.
Looking at this photo, you can see the curved handrail to the right does look like the side of an escalator.
Downstairs was clothing, home and toys.
“I remember going downstairs to buy my white plimsoles which had a red stripe all the way around it for school” Hothi S.
“I went there shopping every Saturday and downstairs they had childrens school clothes” Kopicki T.
And although this particular memory is more about Waitrose (which would have been where the Observatory shopping centre is today), I found it quite amusing. The lunch hour rush was just the same in the old days.
“I remember Tesco and when I worked at ICI we used to rush down to Waitrose to buy the fresh salad for lunch – although not far, it was quite a race there and back in an hour!” Smith H.
This is how I imagine the Tesco would have looked, using my photoshop magic.
Tesco Queensmere Slough 1970s
Until quite recently, there was a surviving 1970s Tesco sign still in use over in Edmonton Green (see below) – so you can imagine this is how the Tesco inside Queensmere Slough would have looked.
Tesco Edmonton 1970s Signage
So there you have it, a little bit of Slough history. Did you know there was a Tesco inside Queensmere? Do you remember it and have any tales to tell? Let us know in the comments.
Sabrina x
I remember this area very well. We used to go shopping in Slough every Tuesday, and my mum and grandma would do their shopping in Tesco while we went to see Mr K in Ritz toys with my grandad, looking for Star Wars figures.
It was outside C&A where, around 1985, some idiot builder working in the ceiling dropped a hacksaw onto my head. I was about 11 and we didn’t go back much after that. My blood stained the tiles for months afterwards.
So yeah, I remember it well.
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oh my god, I am glad you are still alive to tell the tale – shocking!
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This is really great ! I remember the tiles like yesterday. Does anyone remember the Post Office next to Littlewoods ? People think I am making it up!
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I remember that Littlewoods had a decent restaurant in the basement.
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Was this basement restaurant outside c&a ?
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Oh I’d forgotten that!, I do remember Suters having one and BHS
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Was racking my brain about the Post Office thinking it would have been a tiny shop – then the penny dropped, the Post Office next to Littlewoods was actually quite big! I remember it now.
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Yes, there was a large Post Office to the side of Littlewoods and next door to that on the right was The Early Learning Centre.
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Yes, I remember the post office in the high street, also remember the Carlton on the same side, we used to go there at the weekend, that was about 1969?
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I remember the Tesco very well. Used to go there with my mum every Friday night in the late 1970s/early 80’s. I would have only been around 6 or 7.
Used to visit Ritz toys first next door, first to the model railway section upstairs, then back down to the Star Wars figure on the ground floor.
Then into Tesco – I would look at the toys in the basement whilst my mum did the food shopping upstairs. Regarding the photo of the stairs above, I may be wrong, but I think that there was actually an escalator next to the stairs (the escalator was for coming back up only).
Other early memories of Queensmere were Zodiak Toys (next to Barclays Bank), Guilloid Sports, Burtons, Etam, Mothercare, Ratners jewellers, Owen & Owen.
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I worked here after school and on Saturdays between 1978/1979 before moving onto Waitrose…they paid £2 more a week haha. I mainly worked on the checkout. The checkout supervisors girls were very smart, red blazers, blue skirts, white blouses, Sheila was the stand out supervisor, extremely nice lady. Us lads wore short navy blue ‘combat’ style jackets.
My mate Peter worked downstairs in the clothing department, he wasn’t best pleased, but we did get discounts for our Tesco Turn Ups lol. It was nice to be financially independent at the grand old age of 14.
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If you walked through Owen & Owen (Debenhams) from the High Street to the back of the shop and into the Queensmere, you had Ravells shoes on the left, to the right of Ravells the Queensmere had a sunken plaza. Opposite the plaza was Tesco.
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I remember that we were very excited when a shop selling hot fresh bread open up inside the precinct. I can remember that there was always a really long queue, but I was happen to join it in return for the pleasure of collecting the bread hot from the shelves. Does anyone else remember this? No one in my family does!
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I remember Tesco there very well, it was on two levels, downstairs was the home and wear section, they had their own record section Dellawear records!
I think most people that first shopped in Tesco there were amazed at the value for money there seemed to be compared to Sainsburys and Waitrose that were in the high st.
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