Almost nothing was laid on for the new estate, so people organised it themselves.450 Within two years of the first tenants arriving there was a community association with more than a thousand members, its own newspaper, a horticultural society, football teams and youth clubs.113,120,628 For the next sixty years the estate's social life ran on that kind of voluntary effort, through carnivals and youth wings, beat groups and a famous choir.126,176,203,629
The Community Association, 1949
A youth club at Carpenders Park, open to people between 14 and 25, started in a church hut in February 1949, and by the late summer it was affiliated to the new Community Association.120 It reached the final of the six-a-side football at the Watford Olympiad, its netball team had already won matches and one member had run for the county.120 Writing in the association's paper, The Estate News, its leader, the Rev. Basil Whitworth, pointed out that the young had begun months before the adults woke up to community ideas.120
The adults followed. In April 1949 more than three hundred tenants crowded into a builders' canteen by the light of two hurricane lamps and elected a committee to press for schools, roads, transport, playing fields and telephones.450 They also signed a petition for cheaper rail fares to Watford and London.450 The Watford Observer reported that the meeting often got out of hand, with no punches pulled on the platform or the floor, but it was agreed that an association should be formed.450 The Oxhey (LCC Estate) Community Association, named after the London County Council estate it served, came into being at a crowded meeting the following month.450 By September 1949 it had 1,014 members.113
Its committee had a social secretary, a sports secretary, an acting education secretary and a youth representative, the last of them the Rev. Basil Whitworth.120 A welfare sub-committee had not yet been formed, so members took up hardship cases themselves.120 The association's paper, The Estate News, called itself the official organ of the association, and the issue for August and September 1949 is reprinted in Poor But Proud.120 The secretary's report in it lists what the committee was chasing: adult playing fields, street lighting before winter, a creche, a medical centre at Oxhey Place, a travelling library due to start that September, buses and school places.120 It had also taken up fencing between the golf course and the houses, slot meters for electricity, quicker immersion heaters and street name boards that could not be uprooted.120
The education authority then granted the use of a school hall and other rooms for dances, meetings and classes, and the Mayor of Watford was invited to open the association's first dance there on 10 September 1949, at two shillings for members.120 Whist drives ran every Saturday evening at the Fairfield Avenue canteen, a dance band was formed on the estate, and the poet and playwright Maurice Carpenter agreed to give weekly lecture discussions on modern writers from 13 September.120 Members had already asked for dressmaking and typing classes, music recitals and a dramatic section.120
The sports section entered a Saturday side in the Watford and District League Charity Cup under the name Brentfield-Oxhey, and a Sunday side in the Kilburn and District League, as well as the Hobbs Cup and the Herts Junior Cup.120 It was still hoping to get ground for a sports field on the estate, and asked for volunteers to make it fit to play on.120 The Oxhey Estate Horticultural Society, which cost 2s 6d a year to join, sold plants, fertiliser and good tools cheaply from a trading hut in Gosforth Lane opposite the contractor's canteen, open on Sunday mornings.120 Its chairman reckoned that at least half the people on the estate were gardening for the first time, and warned that allotments had to be applied for through the rent collector, where there was already a long waiting list.120
A junior association run by children
Later in 1949 the association launched a junior Community Association, run by children for children, which Poor But Proud says was the first scheme of its kind in the country.113 The idea grew out of the lack of anything for children to do, after windows in unfinished houses were smashed.113 There was a junior edition of The Estate News, and two streets ran their own junior football teams.113 The stumbling block was a building. The workmen's canteen in Fairfield Avenue was available for one evening a week and was hopelessly small, so many children had to be turned away.113
The first clubs, fetes and produce shows
Poor But Proud's list of early voluntary organisations records the Community Association, the Methodist church, the Girl Guides, the St Alphege youth club, the horticultural society, an evening institute and a drama group in 1949.628 In 1950 came the Blackwell Boys' Club, youth clubs at Northwick and Warren Dell, the British Legion and its women's branch, the Clitheroe old people's club and an Oxhey Women's Club, along with branches of the main political parties.628 The Boy Scouts and the Workers' Educational Association followed in 1951, and the Boys' Brigade, the Brownies, an Oxhey Camera Club and a Citizens Advice Bureau in 1952.628 A civil defence group and the Coronation street committees were added in 1953.628 One resident remembers a youth club in a Nissen hut in Oxhey Lane and dances at the Pavilion, where her husband later joined a camera club.479
On a Saturday in June 1950 the community association borrowed undeveloped plots at the corner of Prestwick Road and Fairfield Avenue and put on a fete.113 The West Herts Post described gaily decorated stalls and sideshows standing among piles of bricks, scaffolding and half-built houses.113 The estate's first local produce show was held at Warren Dell School that September.113
By 1951, after the Rev. Basil Whitworth complained at a Watford youth committee meeting about estate organisations being refused the use of school halls, the new schools were in regular use for community activities.113 There was an evening institute and evening classes, a children's ballet class, political meetings, a Girl Guide group, an air training detachment and a St John Ambulance cadet unit.113 When a county report that June called the estate appalling and soulless, the association answered that it was running a weekly film show, dances and whist drives, and that most residents were glad to be out of the slums.113
Boys' Brigade, Scouts and Guides
Most of the uniformed groups were based on the churches, and Churches tells how those congregations began.184 St Martin's in Muirfield Road was home to Brownies, Cubs, Guides, Scouts and the Boys' Brigade.184,185 Scouts of the 2nd Oxhey group staged Gang Shows at Hampden School.446 Their Gang Show pioneer, who died in December 1989, is remembered by members of the 9th South West Herts troop in the 1960s as an inspiration who wrote songs for them.630
The crowning of South Oxhey's Rose Queen was an annual event, run by the Brown Owl of the 5th Oxhey St Martins Brownie pack and held at St Martin's church.631 The Watford Observer photographed the crowning in July 1964, and a reader says the crowning was done by a Guides district commissioner.631 On 27 November 1965 a uniformed children's group, thought to be Brownies, was photographed at a well in the Methodist church hall, probably at the annual Yuletide fayre held for church funds.583
In July 1969 a scout from Little Oxhey Lane set out with another Watford scout on a 480 mile walk to Mainz, Watford's twin town.126 The new headquarters of the 14th Bushey and Oxhey Scout Group in Oxhey Drive was opened on 8 May 1981 by the chairman of Three Rivers District Council, who unveiled a commemorative plaque.176 In 2010 the 7th Oxhey Methodist Guides spent two of their meetings in the library's new computer suite as part of Guiding's centenary celebrations.632
Drama, art and the estate on film
The Oxhey Drama Group was one of the first voluntary bodies on the estate, and amateur drama kept going for decades.628 In March 1974 the Saints Drama Club staged Oscar Wilde's Lord Arthur Savile's Crime at the Social Centre, and its acting chairman said the cast performed very well.126 An art society grew out of an exhibition at the Methodist church on 13 May 1978, where a dozen local artists, most of them senior citizens, joined the flower festival for the church's twenty-fifth anniversary with pictures, wood carvings and dressed dolls.126 The art made at Clarendon School, from mosaics to The Acrobats sculpture, is in Schools.
The estate was filmed early. In July 1958 two Oxhey amateur photographers produced a colour film called Came the Day (Poor But Proud prints Come the Day), commissioned by the South Oxhey Community Association, a travelogue built around the 1957 carnival procession that opens and closes with a refuse van going round the streets.126,152 Film could also be an argument. In December 1974 a thirty minute video about what was wrong with South Oxhey, made by a youth worker and a team of volunteers and shot in the precinct, was shown to about a hundred residents, accused councillors of being out of touch and roused people into action.126 Our Oxhey credits the carnival film to a single maker rather than two, and says his cine film passed to the Three Rivers Museum after his death in 2005 and that a DVD was made for the Celebration of South Oxhey project the following year.152
Writing groups were at work too. The South Oxhey Scribblers, formed at the ASCEND centre after a West Herts College creative writing course and funded by the county adult learning service, launched their book Only on a Friday at Oxhey Library on 24 September 2010.633 On 1 June 2012 seven residents spent a day at the library in a creative writing workshop led by the poet Michael Crowley, working from automatic writing, memoir exercises and invented characters, and four of the pieces were published on Our Oxhey.634 The Literary Estate project ended the next day with readings at the Watford Palace Theatre by John Schad, Michael Crowley and David Reidy, funded by Lancaster University.635 Four weeks later, on 30 June 2012, Poor But Proud was launched at All Saints Church between two and five, with the local MP David Gauke speaking, museum exhibits on show and the old chapel open.214,434
Later films have been about looking back. On 15 June 2013 Watford Filmhouse ran a pop-up cinema tent at the Oxhey Fayre from one until five, showing archive films found with the University of Hertfordshire, including the 1927 Oxhey chasm, footage of the Oxhey Fayre of 2000 and the 2002 Golden Jubilee beacon.636 The show was repeated at Bushey and Oxhey Methodist Church on 26 April 2014, and that programme included the film of the 1957 South Oxhey Carnival.637 John Schad's play Nowhere Near London was first staged script in hand at the Watford Palace Theatre on 7 July 2014, with a question and answer session afterwards.638 In 2016 a short documentary made by Fred Dalmasso with residents and Michael Crowley, called Nowhere Near Utopia, was released to coincide with the play's first full production at the same theatre on 4 July 2016, although the Watford Observer called it John Schad's own first film.226
The Clitheroe Club and Embling Hall
Poor But Proud dates the Clitheroe Club to 1 August 1950, in a two-storey clubroom in Clitheroe Gardens let at £26 a year, with an extension finished in the autumn of 1952.113 One account on Our Oxhey has the club running education with visiting speakers in the 1950s.147 A Watford Observer photograph of 1964 shows a sing-song at the Clitheroe Old People's Club, where a group with piano, guitar, drums and a compere regularly played the social evenings.639 Members remember a warden who lived in a house in Clitheroe Gardens opposite the club, jumble sales and someone always at the piano.640
The club's hall was named the Embling Hall after James H Embling OBE, the first head teacher of Oxhey Wood School, who was a founder member of its management committee and its chairman for many years.511 Schools tells his story.
The club itself was rebuilt. Lovell was chosen in March 2011 to build a £1.5 million affordable housing scheme for Sanctuary Group at Clitheroe Gardens, the new club opened a few yards from the old one, the last of the original buildings came down on 17 October 2013 and the work was finished by the spring of 2015.217,641,642 The wider rebuilding of those years is in Rebuilding the centre.
In February 2012 Our Oxhey volunteers spent a day at the club recording and transcribing members' memories over tea and cake.643 Members described bingo on Tuesday afternoons, Wednesday mornings and Thursday afternoons, a Knit and Natter group, a Christmas party, a summer barbecue and days out.644 They also remembered coach holidays for about forty-eight people to Devon, Cornwall and Yarmouth, with meals and dancing at the holiday camp.644 A Greater London Council sign still stood at the entrance to Clitheroe Gardens years after the GLC had gone, and a local historian photographed it as one of the last visible traces.645
The Age UK Hertfordshire health and wellbeing centre was launched at the new club on 28 November 2014, with the local MP among those present.220 It offered a drop-in with tea and coffee, a hot meal every weekday through its 10 to 2 club, quizzes, yoga, speakers and computer sessions, and clinics for feet, hearing and eyes.220
The Cow Shed and the community centres
The estate's community centre was a wooden former workmen's hut on Oxhey Drive, near Oxhey Wood Junior School, and it was known locally as the Cow Shed.233,492 Residents remember dances there and a local singer performing, but for teenagers there was little else beyond the ice cream parlour.131,492 Other huts were fought over for years. In June 1952 the county education committee was allowed to buy eleven huts behind Oxhey Place, formerly used by building workers, for £500 for social activities.126 In May 1953 a councillor asked for county huts in Ainsdale Road to be given to youth clubs, and in August 1955 residents were angry to find ten of them demolished, after more than five years of proposals and counter-proposals between the LCC, the county and the rural district council.126
A second club stood across the railway. A man who went on one of the Submarine Club's outings says it was the old working men's club, under the station walkway on the far side from South Oxhey, and a woman remembers meeting her husband there in September 1952.646 A charabanc outing to Southend set off from the Submarine Club in the 1960s, and one of the men on it says that when the club was demolished a new working men's club was built near the shops at the top of Hayling Road.646
By October 1956 the Community Centre in Oxhey Drive was the address of the South Oxhey Times, and the paper's diary for that month lists olde tyme dances, ballet classes, a loan club, a pram club and youth club evenings there.150 The hall was available for hire, and a vice-president had built its new stage almost single handed.150
The £60,000 Social Centre in Gosforth Lane opened on 2 June 1965, with a lounge, coffee bar, dance hall, games, crafts and meeting rooms and parking for a thousand cars.126 The West Herts Post declared that 29,000 people could stop grumbling, a figure well above the 17,000 usually given for the estate.126 A Citizens Advice Bureau opened there a month later.126 The Community Association itself was still in the wooden hut. In March 1975 Watford Rural Parish Council told it that it would approach the GLC about new premises, the association having been founded twenty-five years before and housed in a building in Oxhey Drive that also served as a youth club and a judo club.126
By May 1981, a year after moving into its new centre in the former Clarendon School buildings, the association had almost 3,000 members and a youth membership of close to 1,000, although the large complex was far from fully used and the cost of running it worried the meeting.176 Membership doubled in the first two months of 1984, after talk of closure eighteen months earlier, with Oxhey Jets football teams, pool and darts teams, twice-weekly bingo and a growing youth club.176 The Centre in Gosforth Lane was rebuilt as a £4.5 million leisure and sports centre, which opened on 28 September 2002.176 Our Oxhey calls it the South Oxhey leisure centre.647,648 The Cow Shed itself burned down and was replaced by a block building that became the Fayer Hall scout hut, and a new scout hut had been built near the Pavilion by December 2017.233
Carnivals, fairs and Oxhey Week
For the Coronation in June 1953 the street committees threw children's parties across the estate.491 At the Falkirk Gardens Coronation party a boy won the fancy dress in a top hat, and his mother sat on the organising committee.649 The Lytham Avenue children's Coronation party was held in the Hampden School dining room, and another party was held at the community hall in Hayling Road.434,650
In September 1956 the Community Association took a parade round the streets to raise money for extensions to the Community Centre in Oxhey Drive and for the eventual provision of a new one.126 Several thousand people watched, and a report the next month said the carnival had shown that a community spirit now existed.126 The first number of the South Oxhey Times, in October 1956, gives the day as Sunday 23 September, with nearly forty floats headed by an American air force band, along with detachments of the British Legion, St John Ambulance, the British Red Cross, the fire brigade and civil defence.150 The Clarendon School boys' band played at two points along the route, the Community Queen had been crowned the day before at a fair on vacant ground off Gosforth Lane, and the Chief Constable allowed a street collection during the procession, which raised £27 7s 1½d.150 The carnival's final accounts were not ready when the paper went to press, but it expected at least £20 to go to the rebuilding fund.150
The best remembered carnival is the one of 1957, and the sources disagree about when it was held. Our Oxhey dates it to August, with the procession starting at the top of Hayling Road and going by Gosforth Lane, Muirfield Road and Prestwick Road to a fairground on the edge of the old golf course, where the Carnival Queen was crowned.152 Poor But Proud says crowds lined a five mile route in October to cheer the parade that wound up Carnival Week, with over thirty floats starting and finishing at the Oxhey Pavilion and the association's secretary riding at their head in period costume as Henry VIII.126 Another carnival followed in October 1959, although some local clergymen were unhappy that it fell on a Sunday.126
Gardens were a competition as well as a chore. The London County Council introduced a tidy up your garden competition in 1959, with separate sections for front gardens and window boxes and silver challenge cups, cash and certificates as prizes.126 Tenants went on competing for silver cups under the Greater London Council, and in the early 1980s Three Rivers agreed that South Oxhey could still enter the old competition for front gardens, flower boxes and allotments.176,651
Smaller occasions fill the photograph albums. At Christmas 1961 Father Christmas arrived by bus to meet a group of South Oxhey schoolchildren.652 A Labour Party fair in October 1965 included a children's birthday tea party, photographed by the Watford Observer.653 On 16 October 1965 Roger Moore, then starring in The Saint, opened a television shop at Station Approach as a friend of the owner and was mobbed by children, some crushed against the window, although Our Oxhey's page still calls it a South Oxhey fete.126,164
Oxhey Week was only an idea until the first meeting of its committee at the Oxhey Labour Club on 21 October 1970, with a prize competition running for six months to pay for it.126 The first week was held in May 1971 and £800 went to local bodies afterwards, and the chairman said it had woken a community spirit.126 The following year several events had to be cancelled for lack of support, the folk evening and ceilidh lost seven pounds, and only about 125 people came to the closing gala ball at the Social Centre.126 Oxhey Week 1973 was cancelled, and an Oxhey festival was called off in the 1980s because preparations had been left too late.126,176
Youth clubs and the Clarendon Youth Wing
There were never enough youth clubs, and the shortage was argued over for twenty years. The Carpenders Park and South Oxhey Council of Youth was formed in October 1955, and in May 1956 it staged its first drama festival to a large audience that almost filled the hall at Clarendon School.126 The Methodist youth club, the Baptist Youth Fellowship and the All Saints youth club competed for a silver challenge cup given by the Oxhey Youth Committee.126 That autumn the South Oxhey Youth Club met at the Community Centre on Thursday and Sunday evenings at half past seven.150 A report of October 1956 said the youth committee had been re-formed and a youth council created, evening class numbers were up and a young person had written a pantomime, but there was a pressing need for a building the young could call their own.126
In December 1960 the youth committee wrote directly to the chairman of the county council asking for an annexe for youth activities to be built on to one of the local schools.126 It counted four mixed youth clubs, two old scholars' associations, a unit of the Girls' Life Brigade, an Air Training Corps and various uniformed groups such as Scouts and Guides.126 A year later the West Herts Post found eighteen youth clubs on the estate, all but one run by the churches, which between them could take only about 150 young people, and quoted young people who said their choices were television, the pub, the streets or the cafe.126
The answer, when it came, was the Clarendon Youth Wing of the South Oxhey Community Association, which opened in September 1963.128,160 Bands played there on Friday nights, and at the Clarendon school fair of 29 May 1965 (see Schools) professional wrestling was staged in the bottom playground beside the youth wing, along with tug of war contests that drew big men who took them very seriously.560,629
Sport
First the estate needed somewhere to play. Much of its sport was played on the old golf course, where Oxhey Cricket Club had a pitch in the 1950s, and The playing fields follows that ground from the last round of golf to the parkrun.654 Work began in 1960 on a sports centre on land next to the Pavilion, with facilities for football, cricket and tennis, changing rooms and a restaurant, expected to take two years and to cost Watford Rural District Council £40,000.126 The swimming pool at Sir James Altham School was officially opened on 8 June 1979, built jointly by Three Rivers District Council and the county council with a £23,000 grant from the Eastern Sports Council, and nearly 450 people were in the water on the Sunday.176 In March 1981 Oxhey Amateur Boxing Club and the Boys' Club put a scheme to the council to dismantle the old swimming pool at the former Sir James Altham School in Chilwell Gardens, on the old Clarendon School site, and rebuild it behind the Social Centre, which would have given Three Rivers its first sports hall.176
The estate's own teams came and went. Prestwick FC beat Swillet FC 2 to 1 in a Challenge Cup final played at Watford Football Club's ground, which one of its players dates to 1959 or 1960, although Our Oxhey's page dates the final to the early 1960s.655 Several of its players had come up through a Carpenders Park juniors side, and the team played the ball out from the back rather than kick and rush.655 A South Oxhey under 16s side won the Benevolent Cup on Good Friday, 12 April 1963, beating their opponents 2 to 0, trained and driven to games by two men from the estate.656 In the mid 1960s several former Clarendon School pupils rode with Watford Roads, a Watford cycling club that already had members in the 1950s.657 The club met once a week at a Watford primary school and later at Abbots Langley Men's Club, ran ten mile time trials on the A41 bypass and set off on Sunday runs from the steps of Watford town hall.657 South Oxhey played Woodside in the West Herts Cup in 1965, and the Watford Observer photographed a young player holding the cup and his winner's medal.658 Oxhey Estate United, which John Swain calls Oxhey Estates United, won a cup in the 1968 to 1969 season.12,655 A resident recalls playing for an Oxhey Labour Club football team in 1974 and 1975.567
The club that lasted was Oxhey Jets. It was formed in 1972 out of a Boys' Brigade team by a man who was born on the estate and lived there all his life, so that under 12s could play competitive football.168,659 The timeline in Poor But Proud gives the club's start as 1970.119 Its founder was awarded the British Empire Medal in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to young people and the community in South Oxhey.659 It grew into a senior club and now runs several sides from the Boundary Stadium in Altham Way.169,659 School and old boys teams are in Schools.
Music and the beat groups
Clarendon School had a brass band, and Schools follows it from morning assembly to Germany and back. The estate's own beat groups came out of the youth clubs. The Ricochets practised in a pub at the bottom of Watford High Street and in a front room in Morriston Close, played as far as Slough and the California Ballroom at Dunstable, released a single, and were written up across a double page of a Liverpool music paper with the Rolling Stones as a threat from the south.567,660 Former members disagree about how the band began, one saying he formed it with three others after telling a girl he was in a band and another that he joined later from a different local group, and the line-up changed more than once.660
Eddie Falcon and the Four Notes had five members and had played earlier as Lee Davis and the Reverbs, whose singer left for Ipswich and helped found Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band.629 They played most of the youth clubs around Watford, with dates at County Hall in London with the Mojos and at the Flamingo Club with Georgie Fame, wore green lurex suits made by their guitarist, who was a tailor, and paid the equivalent of two weeks' wages for a write-up in a teenage magazine.629 At a band competition in Watford town hall the Zombies came first, the local band Gene and the Cossacks second and the Four Notes third.629
Gene and the Cossacks, whose bass player grew up in Trevose Way, played the Clarendon Youth Wing on Friday nights and the community centre in Oxhey Drive, mentored younger estate bands and once won a battle of the bands against the Small Faces, the prize a vinyl recording.629 On 7 March 1966 the Small Faces themselves played the Social Centre in Gosforth Lane with Gene and the Cossacks in support, admission seven shillings.126 Bands and singers also played the old shed at Carpenders Park station, according to a former Hampden pupil who performed there.629
ASCEND, STEP UP and the modern groups
Since 1996 ASCEND, the All Saints' Centre for Employment and New Directions in Gosforth Lane, has helped local people into work and training, with a reception staffed by volunteers, courses and careers guidance.189,190 Its cafeteria was popular at lunchtime.661 In November 2009 ASCEND took a five-year lease from Three Rivers District Council on land at Crowborough Path for its Dig Deep allotment project.205 The council leader, Ann Shaw, opened the allotment at the end of June 2010, ten students funded by West Herts College received certificates, a building firm donated the shed, and the neighbourhood police sergeant said the drinking that had plagued the site had stopped once the plot was in use.205 Gareth Malone, who had formed the community choir in 2008, was patron of ASCEND and sent a message of support.205
ASCEND's awards evening on 16 November 2010 included a fashion show, a reading from the Scribblers' book and a slideshow of the allotment, with certificates for literacy, digital photography and computing presented by the Bishop of Hertford, Gareth Malone and a local police officer.662 STEP UP opened on 11 May 2011 at 39 Oxhey Drive, the building that had housed the temporary library, as a partnership between ASCEND and Herts Mind Network funded by Three Rivers District Council, with a drop-in, training rooms and counselling rooms.209 More than a hundred people came to the open day, among them the Lord Lieutenant and the High Sheriff of Hertfordshire.209 In 2011 ASCEND ran six week computer courses at STEP UP, one week of which was spent learning to add memories to the Our Oxhey website.663
Other groups filled the newer buildings. An Oxhey Craft Group started in August 2010 and met on the first Saturday of each month at the library, a drop-in where members taught each other knitting, patchwork and beading.664 Weekly pottery classes for anyone aged nine and over at The Centre in Gosforth Lane, supported by Watford Rural Parish Council, exhibited their work at Oxhey Library on 25 March 2011, the youngest exhibitor 14 and the oldest 85.648 A South Oxhey Residents Association had been formed by early 2014, meeting on the third Thursday of each month at half past seven in the parish hall in Oxhey Drive and describing itself as active and non-political.350
The history volunteers took a stall to the village fayre each summer. On 16 June 2012 they spoke to 169 people, recorded ten sets of memories and ran a treasure hunt for sixteen children before the wind forced them to take their gazebo down at about four o'clock.665 The stall drew 244 visitors on 7 June 2014.666 In 2015 the volunteers used the Great War as their theme, working from Bushey Museum's commemoration project.667
The community choir, 2008
Gareth Malone formed a community choir on the estate in 2008 for BBC Two's The Choir: Unsung Town, which was shown in September 2009.203,668 Members who joined in September 2009 say they learned the Agnus Dei in Latin in eight weeks, rehearsing for an hour and a half a week in Oxhey Wood School hall.669,670 One member of the Clitheroe Club recalls Gareth Malone coming to the over 50s club to talk about the choir, after which several older members joined, one of them still singing solos in her late eighties.671 An early concert was given at the Watford Colosseum on 18 December, in 2009 or 2010.669 A member writing in March 2010 remembered going with the choir to the Abbey Road studios.672
The summer concert at the Palace Theatre in Watford on 16 June 2011 ran from Bruckner's Locus Iste and Mozart's Ave Verum through five movements of Vivaldi's Gloria to Walking on Sunshine and Don't Look Back in Anger, all sung from memory, and ended with The White Cliffs of Dover in memory of a member who had died.673 That June the choir had a stall at the Oxhey Village Environment Group summer fayre, selling plants, cakes and merchandise, with a box at the Palace Theatre concert as the raffle prize.674 On 16 July 2011 it sang at the South Oxhey Summer Fun Day in the precinct, a day of stalls, a funfair and face painting that was rained on until about half past two.675 Writing in 2012, one member listed singing at the Watford Colosseum, St Albans Abbey, in the Oxhey precinct and at Westminster Hall, and said the choir was soon billed to appear at the Camden Roundhouse.676 The choir still rehearses every week in term time.668