Town in Berkshire, England
Bracknell
Bracknell shares its name with Wilde's most fearsome dowager, and for over 40 years it was where Britain's weather forecasts were made.
Key information
- County
- Berkshire
- Nation
- England
- Known for
- The Met Office's old home, tech firms, The Lexicon, and Lady Bracknell
- Famous people
- Oscar Wilde, Lewis Silkin
About Bracknell
The town that shares a name with Lady Bracknell
Mention Bracknell to anyone who knows their theatre and they will think of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, first staged in 1895. Lady Bracknell, who famously treats losing both parents as "carelessness", is one of the best-known characters in English comedy. The real Bracknell is rather less formidable. The name is thought to come from Old English and to mean something like Braca's corner of land, a clearing on the edge of the great royal forest.
From forest clearing to a town of about 5,000 people
For centuries Bracknell was a small settlement on the edge of Windsor Forest, a huge royal hunting ground. Nearby Easthampstead was the more important place, with a royal hunting lodge, and Bracknell lived off the roads that crossed the forest. By 1949 only around 5,000 people lived here. That was the year the government chose it as one of the post-war new towns, built to take families out of bomb-damaged, overcrowded London. The New Towns Act of 1946 had been driven through by Lewis Silkin, the minister for town and country planning, and Bracknell was part of the ring of planned towns around the capital that followed. It grew fast, with new neighbourhoods, a purpose-built town centre and plenty of roundabouts and landscaped green space between them. The result was a town that is mostly a product of the second half of the twentieth century.
Where the nation's weather was made
From 1961 until 2003 Bracknell was home to the headquarters of the Met Office. Forecasters and early supercomputers worked here, and the data and predictions that fed the nation's weather forecasts were prepared in the town. The move to Exeter in 2003 closed the chapter, but the link is not forgotten. A town that earned a reputation as a centre for science and technology still has a cluster of tech and engineering firms along its business parks.
Out with the 1960s, in with The Lexicon
The original town centre, with its concrete shopping precinct around Charles Square, was a textbook piece of 1960s planning. In 2017 The Lexicon opened, a large new shopping and leisure district built by redeveloping the northern part of the centre, and one of the biggest changes the town has seen since it was first built. For culture, South Hill Park is the long-standing favourite. A country house in its own grounds, it has been an arts centre since the early 1970s, with a theatre, cinema and studios.
Robins, Bees and a forest on the doorstep
Bracknell Town Football Club, nicknamed the Robins, was founded in 1896, so the town's football story is older than the town itself. The club left its long-time Larges Lane ground in 2021 and now plays at Bottom Meadow in Sandhurst. Ice hockey was the other local favourite. The Bracknell Bees began in the town, but moved to Slough in 2020 after Bracknell's John Nike ice rink closed. Outdoors, the pine and heath of Swinley Forest begin almost at the edge of the town. The Look Out Discovery Centre there is the place for walking, cycling and science exhibits, and it is a reminder that the royal forest never quite disappeared. With Ascot, Windsor and Wellington College's neighbourhood of Crowthorne all within easy reach, Bracknell has a neat position in the middle of the Thames Valley's wooded countryside.