Birch Hill

Birch Hill is a southern suburb of Bracknell, originally part of the now-defunct civil parish of Easthampstead, in the English county of Berkshire.

The Birch Hill estate was built in the 1970s on the slightly higher ground above South Hill Park, a Georgian and Victorian country house in beautiful parkland with two lakes (known locally as North Lake and South Lake), now an arts centre. Birch Hill is bounded by Hanworth to the west, Crown Wood and Forest Park to the north-east, Easthampstead village to the north and the Nine Mile Ride and the Crown plantations of Swinley Forest to the south. Birch Hill Primary School and a large Sainsbury's supermarket store are located within Birch Hill, together with a shopping centre at the centre of Birch Hill (containing a McColls newsagent, dry cleaners, chemist, Coral betting shop, a Chinese restaurant and an Aldi store), as well as Bracknell Hockey Club, the Esporta Royal County of Berkshire Club, Coral Reef Water Park nearby. The Look Out Discovery Centre, being across the road, is actually in the parish of Crowthorne.

The streets in Birch Hill are named in alphabetic order. For example, the southernmost area includes from east to west Naseby, Northcott, Nutley, Oakengates, Octavia, Orion, Qualitas and Quintilis. Other streets include Herondale, Hillberry, Inchwood, Jameston, Jevington, Juniper, Kimberley, Knightswood, Madingley and Melrose.

Local facilities (other than the shops mentioned above) include: toilets, a hairdressing salon called Scissor Shack, the Silver Birch public house, Ringmead Medical Centre, a library, South Hill Park Pre-School, a play park for small children (called Hedgehog Park), the hut of the 9th South Bracknell Scout group and a community hall used by a number of small groups.

Birch Hill was featured in an episode of Road Wars that was shown on Sky 3 on 12 November 2009.