Churches

South Oxhey was built without churches. A 1951 report, quoted later by the Watford Observer, found that after three years the estate had no church, no church hall, no pub and very few shops.¹⁴² Congregations started anyway, in a chapel of 1612, in builders' huts and in school halls, and within about ten years five of them had buildings of their own.^{114,137,145,454}

Oxhey Chapel, 1612

The oldest church on the ground is Oxhey Chapel in Gosforth Lane. Sir James Altham built it in 1612 as the private chapel of his house.^18,19,114 After the mansion it served was pulled down in 1799, it stood alone in the fields of the Oxhey Place estate.¹⁸ About 1881 J. E. Cussans found it standing by itself in a meadow east of Oxhey Place farm, and John Betjeman remembered it standing in open fields.^35,159

When the new estate was built around it, the chapel became its first place of worship. From 1948 the first council tenants worshipped there.^114,158 Its full history is in Oxhey Chapel.

St Alphege's, Carpenders Park

St Alphege's in Carpenders Park, a daughter church of St Matthew's, Oxhey, opened in June 1944 as a temporary church and hall by the Carpenders Park halt, the wooden station of 1914.¹⁰⁰ From 1948 the first tenants worshipped there as well as in Oxhey Chapel.^101,114,488 Its youth club met in a South Oxhey school from 1949 to 1951, and it closed in 1954 when All Saints took over its work and congregation.¹⁰⁰

The priest at St Alphege's was the Rev. Basil Whitworth, who went on to serve the new estate at All Saints.^100,160 Nigel Lee wrote in 1971 that Anthony Blackwell's widow suggested pulling the chapel down and moving her husband's coffin, and that Whitworth tactfully resisted the idea (see Oxhey Chapel).³⁶

The Methodist church, Prestwick Road

Methodist worship near the estate began about 1944 in the table tennis room of The Barn, the community hall in Oxhey Lane, as a small offshoot of Bushey and Oxhey Methodist Church run by a local couple and one other layman.⁵⁸⁰ Its Sunday school took its first outing by bus from Watford Heath to Kings Langley.⁵⁸⁰ Once building started the Methodists held evening services in the workmen's canteen hut on the estate, but they were less successful than hoped and stopped after about three months.¹⁴⁵ Some time later, as the new council schools went up, other Methodists from Bushey started a Sunday school in one of them, and it moved into the church when that opened (see Building the Estate).¹⁴⁵

The church in Prestwick Road opened on 28 March 1953, though some accounts give 1952, and was paid for by a war damage grant transferred from a bombed Methodist church in St John's Wood.^145,184 A resident says his father was one of the men who built it.²¹⁶ Another says the building was only ever put up as the church hall, with a cupboard in the entrance meant to become the corridor to a church that was never built, and that the land kept back for that church was built on later.⁵⁸¹ The minister in 1956 was the Rev. Stan Weary, who baptised one resident that year and kept in touch with her until his death in about 2023.²¹⁶ About 1959 the church ran a youth club with table tennis, snooker and a record player, remembered as a happy place and run by a man who had lost an arm.²¹⁶

The hall was one of the busiest rooms on the estate. The St Meryl Horticultural Society of Carpenders Park competed there against other societies through the 1960s, and the Watford Observer photographed the show in 1961.⁵⁸² The same paper photographed uniformed children round a wishing well in the hall on 27 November 1965, probably at the annual Yuletide Fayre held to raise church funds, and a reader identified them as Brownies.⁵⁸³ A resident who belonged to both groups says the Girls' Life Brigade was attached to the Baptist church and the Brownies and Guides to the Methodist church, although she is not sure which way round.⁵⁸³ The women's branch of the Royal British Legion held its Remembrance Day service at the Methodist church, and before that at All Saints, with sandwiches afterwards in the All Saints hall.⁵⁸¹ In the late 1970s the Sunday school met in a draughty portakabin with wobbly floors beside the church until an extension was built, and the Girls' Brigade met at the church too.⁵⁸¹

The last of the old church came down on 17 October 2013, by which time the new church a few yards away already had its signs up, and it opened in January 2014 (see the Methodist church in Buildings).^215,216

St Francis, Oaklands Avenue

St Francis, an inset parish of St Matthew's, Oxhey, stood off Oaklands Avenue, on the Oxhey Hall edge of the estate.⁵⁸⁴ Broadfield, a small private primary school of no more than about thirty children, used its hall from the 1940s, and the pupils had to walk through the church to reach the toilets.⁵²² Wedding photographs of 1958 were taken outside the church, and the bride had been the first baby christened in it.⁵⁸⁴ Accounts of when the school closed differ between the late 1950s and the late 1960s.⁵²² Schools has more about it. A resident recalls that one of the church's vicars became a Roman Catholic and went to work as a guide at the Vatican.⁵⁸⁴ The church was demolished, a resident thinks in the 1970s.⁵⁸⁴ Its land then became a Home Office site for police officers, and the houses of St Francis Close now stand there.⁵⁸⁴

A Sunday school at Hampden

An early Sunday school met at Hampden School in Little Oxhey Lane. Members of a Watford church opened it and ran it and its activities for many years.⁴⁵⁴ A reader on Our Oxhey went there most Sunday afternoons for about three years, and still has the Bible given for regular attendance in 1952 and a New Testament given in 1954.⁴³⁴

The Catholic parish and St Joseph's

Catholics formed a parish in 1952 to serve the London County Council estate, and used St Joseph's hall as their church until the church on Oxhey Drive was built in 1960, though Poor But Proud says it was completed in 1961.^{119,149,177,489} Weddings were held in the hall while it served as the church, including one photographed in 1957.⁴⁸⁹ Children at St Joseph's school each brought a penny a week towards a brick for the new building, and parishioners were asked to give a part of their income at mass, which the mother of five pupils remembers as expensive.¹⁷⁷

The church stands on the south side of Oxhey Drive, was consecrated in 1981 and belongs to the Diocese of Westminster.¹⁷⁷ Mobile phone masts now stand on its tower.¹⁷⁷

The Baptist church, Gosforth Lane

In 1952 the Baptists rented a builder's hut from the estate's contractor (see Building the Estate).¹³⁷ They laid the stones of their hall in Gosforth Lane on 27 September 1952, and it opened on 17 January 1953.^137,144 A guest performed the opening, and the photograph of the day also shows the minister of Bushey Baptist Church, the Rev. Arthur Halden, the architect Victor Knowles and the deaconess Freda Moody.¹⁴⁴ The church was a branch of Bushey Baptist Church until it became independent in 1970.¹³⁷

A resident remembers the first Baptist church as a cosy tin building with a corrugated roof, where children were told bible stories and given a bible, although Poor But Proud describes a hall with cavity walls.^137,585 The building was extended in 2010, and photographs of 2013 show its modernised front.^144,585

St Martin's, Muirfield Road

St Martin's, a Presbyterian church that became United Reformed in 1972, was built in Muirfield Road in the early 1950s, and an extra wing was added to it later.^158,184,185 It was home to Brownies, Cubs, Guides, Scouts and the Boys' Brigade.^184,185 A resident who was in them says the scouts were the 73rd or 78th South West Herts troop, that he had been in the Lifeboys before he joined the scouts, and that meetings were much better in the church itself than in the wooden hut they later moved to.⁵⁸⁶ A theatre student started dancing classes for local children at the church in the 1960s.¹⁸⁵ The Watford Observer photographed the annual fete in July 1963.⁵⁸⁶ Residents ran the Girls' Brigade and the Boys' Brigade there through the 1960s and 1970s, alongside a Sunday school and a weekly mother and toddler group.⁵⁸⁷

The minister through those years was the Rev. Dick Schad, whose name Our Oxhey's readers spell Shad, and who with his wife ran much of the church's work.^506,587 His son, the novelist John Schad, grew up on the estate.⁵⁰⁶ Dick Schad was still taking weddings at St Martin's in 1971.⁵⁸⁷

The first building was replaced in 1989.¹⁸⁴ When it came down its wall cross, by then rotten, was taken off by a resident with a sergeant from Oxhey police station and carried to a Baptist church in North Watford on a car roof.¹⁸⁵ The site took both the new St Martin's and the houses of St Martins Close.¹⁸⁵ The United Reformed congregation now shares St John's church in Northwood.¹⁸⁴

All Saints

All Saints was built just north of the chapel and consecrated in 1953.¹⁰¹ Gladys Wray, writing in Hertfordshire Countryside in 1963, gives 1954 instead and says the Bishop of St Albans consecrated it, that it was proclaimed a parish church in 1961 and that a vicarage was built nearby.³¹⁹ The parish history gives 1960 as the year it became a parish, but the Order in Council creating it is dated 24 March 1961.^101,154 The new church had no bell of its own, so the chapel's was rung for it.³¹⁹

The author Iris Jones Simantel, who married at All Saints in 1954, remembers that the church grounds had not yet been consecrated, so the legal part of the wedding took place in Oxhey Chapel and everyone then walked over to the new church for the rest of the service.^494,588

The Rev. Basil Whitworth led the church through the 1950s.¹⁶⁰ There was no vicarage in those years, and a resident remembers him driving to the church from his home in St George's Drive in a small beige car.¹⁶⁰ Another recalls being confirmed on 31 March 1957 and being made by Whitworth one of three teenage leaders of the Sunday morning junior service at half past ten, a job that included ringing the chapel bell in 1958.¹⁶⁰ That junior service grew into the All Saints Young People's Fellowship, a youth group led by lay members that met in a tin hut on the far side of the railway, reached through the tunnel.¹⁶⁰ A resident lists the clergy who followed Whitworth, with some doubt about the order, as Robin Osborn, then Edward Charles, then Alan Woodland, with Pat Maddox and Maurice Horsey among the curates.¹⁶⁰ It was Charles who ran the 1963 appeal to save the chapel.³¹⁹

The parish then built itself a church hall. A report of the dedication in the Watford and West Herts Post says it cost £8,400, of which the diocese allocated £5,000, that the parish had raised £600 towards the rest through its Church Hall Fund, and that an anonymous donor had promised to double anything raised by the end of the year, up to £800.³³² Its architect was Keith Powell, who designed it while serving on the All Saints church council.³³² The same service dedicated the restored chapel and six stained glass windows, designed by Agnes Charles, a sister of the vicar, the Rev. H. E. R. Charles, and by Vera Brookman, both of Codicote.³³² Among those there were a former curate, Father T. J. Maddox, the Rural Dean, the Rev. J. G. Downward, and the local Methodist minister, the Rev. F. Townley, who read the lessons with him, as well as a sister of the late Mr Blackwell, whose family had owned the chapel, and the widow of the chapel's late organist.³³² Our Oxhey dates the service 1961 and Nigel Lee gives October 1964 (see Oxhey Chapel).^36,332

By the late 1970s the church had been modernised, with the congregation seated in the round, and a resident who married there in 1978 says she would rather have married in the old chapel had it been big enough.⁵⁸⁸

The church closed on 17 July 1993, after blue asbestos was found in its roof, and it stood boarded up until it was demolished in February 2000.^119,176 The parish history also gives the asbestos as the reason it had to come down.¹⁰¹ On Our Oxhey, the author Rose McNamara-Wright recalls watching the old church being knocked down, and a photographer who was let inside by the Rev. Anne Douglas has posted pictures taken just before the demolition.^160,588 Four stained glass windows were taken out before the old church came down, and an enquiry at a local history event was told they had been damaged during removal and sent to a stained glass specialist in Bushey.^160,589

The parish history and the church's own pages say a new church and community building opened on the same site in 2000.^101,184,488 The rebuilt All Saints is now the base of the charity ASCEND (see Change and renewal).⁵⁹⁰

The Salvation Army hut

A Salvation Army hut stood on the corner of Hayling Road and Gosforth Lane.¹⁶⁶ A resident remembers a Salvation Army band playing round the streets, though it may have come from Watford, and says the hut closed in the mid 1960s and then stood empty for years before the present housing was built on the site.¹⁶⁶

Halls before community centres

More of what went on in these church halls is in Clubs, sport and events.