South Oxheya history you can walk
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Buildings

This map and list pin the farms and lodges of the old Oxhey Place estate, described from the 1872 sale particulars.20 The London County Council began building South Oxhey on that land in 1946, and in the years that followed the estate gained shops, schools, churches, pubs and a library.23,25 They also pin those buildings, along with older survivors such as the 1612 chapel and the Victorian coal duty markers on the county boundary.19,47,292 Each pin says what was there and what stands there now. Several have gone, including three of the estate's pubs, both secondary schools and the St Andrew's precinct, so those pins mark sites rather than buildings.25,31 Positions come from OpenStreetMap, or for lost buildings from Ordnance Survey maps of the 1870s and 1890s, 1912 to 1913, the 1930s and the 1960s. Two streets are pinned at their midpoints.5,59,60,90,165,295

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Farms and lodges

Oxhey Hall Built early 1500sStill there

ThenHistoric England dates Oxhey Hall to the early 1500s and suggests it may have been a hunting lodge or a range of lodgings, one wing of a once larger house. It keeps a richly carved 16th-century oak ceiling of 16 panels. The scheduling text for its dry moat repeats a story that Henry VIII hunted from here, but gives no evidence. The house was extended in the early 1600s, and a timber barn of around 1700 stands nearby. Remodelled around 1870, it was one of the four farms offered for sale in 1872, with 258 acres. The sale papers called it "a capital farm residence", partly moated and lately enlarged, and singled out its carved drawing-room ceiling. In 1924 some of its land was sold along with Oxhey Lodge Farm, and part of the land sold became the Oxhey Hall estate of the 1930s. In the Second World War the farmhouse held the Lucy Gaster Children's Home, which took in displaced and refugee children. Memories of the home differ sharply. One woman sent there as an infant remembers kindness, while another former child remembers a brutal place.18,20,82,103,178,179,186,283,285,286

NowThe one farmhouse of the old estate to survive, it still stands on Hampermill Lane. It has been listed Grade II* since 1985, and its moat has been a scheduled monument since 1992. The barn, listed Grade II, and the other old farm buildings are now one house, which its architects say won a RIBA East award for 2020 to 2021.

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Estate timber yard, Paddock Spring Built by 1872Gone

ThenLocal historian Neil Hamilton says there was a timber yard, sawpit and workshop here in the 1860s. The sale particulars of 1872 list the estate's yard among the woods kept in hand, with two cottages listed next to it. The same papers value the timber and nursery stock at £10,000. The six-inch Ordnance Survey map of the 1870s shows buildings at this corner of the woods, on the lane that is now Gosforth Lane. Hamilton says two old cottages stood here at right angles to the road in the 1950s, and one of them was the estate's first police post. He says they were pulled down around 1952, and a new police station opened in Oxhey Drive in 1953.20,38,140,141,165,295,702

NowWalking here in 2013, Hamilton found an old track between banks running through to Oxhey Drive, with unusual metal fence posts and gate posts, and traces of hornbeam coppicing. He thinks old metal fencing on the St Joseph's School boundary may mark the edge of the Oxhey Place grounds. The council's plan for Oxhey Woods still names Paddock Spring as one of the old parcels of the northern woods. The yard's site is now the way into the woods from Gosforth Lane, beside the air training corps and army cadet huts. We found no date for when the yard itself went.

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Site of Oxhey Place farm Built by 1872Demolished

ThenThe estate's home farm stood between the old walled garden and Oxhey Chapel. In 1872 the holding, which included Ranger's Farm and Pond Wood, came to 383 acres. It had a four-bedroom farmhouse, big barns, a granary on stone piers and six cottages, one of which had once been a dove cote. Thomas Blackwell rented it in 1872, five years before he bought the estate. In October 1877 Canon Gee told the Watford Natural History Society about the Grimston Oak, which grew beside Mr Blackwell's farmhouse fence. About 1881 J. E. Cussans found the chapel alone in a meadow east of the farm, and in 1889 H. J. Foley passed a pretty farmhouse and a huge barn. Walter Blackwell's will, which took effect when he died in 1912, told his trustees to let the estate's farm and the rest of its land. The 1935 Ordnance Survey shows the farmhouse about 130 metres west of the chapel. The London County Council's compulsory purchase order of 1943 lists the farmhouse and its garden as let to a tenant who lived there, and he objected to the order.5,18,20,35,53,57,72,73,90,98,165,295,296,297

NowBy the 1960s the site was under the houses of Lincoln Drive and Matlock Crescent, which still cover it, and we found no date for when the farm came down. Pond Wood, once part of the farm, still stands at Northwick Road and Seacroft Gardens.

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Site of Park Pond Built by 1872Gone

ThenIn the sale of 1872 Park Pond was a plot of the Oxhey Place farm. The Ordnance Survey map surveyed in 1872 to 1874 shows a large pond with stepped banks just west of Pond Wood. A local historian reads its square shape on the old maps as a made pond, probably stocked with fish, in the natural place for water off Oxhey Woods to gather. An etching by Frederick Goodall, said to date from 1878, shows cattle watering there, with the Oxhey Place farmhouse and the chapel behind. An Our Oxhey contributor's early memories, headed winter 1943 to 1944, include fishing for tiddlers and newts in the pond in Pond Wood. A former member of Oxhey Wood School's staff thinks this was probably the larger pond, shown as the Ox Pond on very early plans of the area, which became part of the school's playing field. The school opened there in two stages, in May 1950 and June 1951. Two contributors remember a freak downpour in the 1980s, when water ran off the woods to the old hollow and flooded part of the school. In 2013 the same former staff member, the school's secretary for more than thirty years, said the ground by the Key Stage 2 playground is always damp, even in a hot summer, and that repeated investigations never found the cause.16,20,24,127,274,290,295,296,297,703

NowThe site is now the grounds of Oxhey Wood Primary School. Pond Wood survives beside the school field, and Natural England counts its 1.6 hectares as ancient woodland.

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Site of the estate nursery Built by 1872Gone

ThenW. H. Smith, who had bought Oxhey in 1866, put the estate up for auction on 3 July 1872. The particulars said a large sum had lately gone on new nurseries and young trees, and valued the timber and nursery stock at £10,000. The Ordnance Survey map surveyed in 1872 to 1874 shows a walled tree nursery beside the road through Oxhey Woods. It was probably the 3.6-acre Lower Frog Hall nursery of the sale, one of the plots of woods, plantations and nurseries that the owner kept in his own hands. The same sale lists Middle and Upper Frog Hall as fields of the small Gate House Farm. In spring 1889 H. J. Foley walked this way along a little-used gravel road through the heart of the woods, on the line of today's Oxhey Drive.5,18,20,38,57,191,192,295

NowThe ground is now part of Oxhey Woods Local Nature Reserve, which Three Rivers District Council declared on 13 June 1997. The nursery site lies in the central part of the woods, between Prestwick Road and Oxhey Drive, just north of the junction where the two roads meet. The council's plan for 2022 to 2027 describes these central woods as mostly oak, including oak plantations under fifty years old, with old hornbeam stubs along the internal banks. The reserve's free car park is close by, at that junction.

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Site of Little Oxhey Farm Built by 1896Demolished

ThenLittle Oxhey Farm does not appear in the 1872 sale of the Oxhey estate. The map of the mid-1890s names it on Little Oxhey Lane, just west of the railway, and in 1935 its buildings stood on the south side of the lane. It was listed in the London County Council's 1943 compulsory purchase order, which the government confirmed in September 1944. The estate's first library, from 1951 to 1962, was very probably in its old farmhouse, which Our Oxhey places on Little Oxhey Lane. A woman who grew up next door remembers bulls tethered to its back wall, a cattle bridge to the field and cows looking in at the back door. She also remembers a cottage opposite, later pulled down, where flats for older people were built. A reader of Our Oxhey says the farmhouse was pulled down after the library moved out, to make the road up to a new swimming pool.4,20,21,22,98,125,176,244,254,291,299,392,600,601

NowThe Sir James Altham Pool, built close by, was officially opened on 8 June 1979. It closed in 2020 and did not reopen. In August 2024 the county council approved an adult day centre on the former Sir James Altham school site, and extra care homes have been proposed for the pool's land. The farm buildings stood about where Lytham Avenue now joins Little Oxhey Lane.

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Site of Oxhey Warren Built by 1896Demolished

ThenThe county's landscape study dates the lime avenue at Oxhey Warren to parkland of about 1820. By 1872 The Warren was a 53-acre pasture on the Oxhey Place home farm, and W. H. Smith had recently built a three-bedroom lodge of red brick and tiles at its gate. A small house called Oxhey Warren is named at the fork of Green Lane on maps from 1896 to the 1960s. It stood where that gate lodge would be, but no source proves it was the same building. The map revised in 1912 to 1913 prints Golf Club beside it, and a 1924 deed recorded a right of way along Green Lane to the clubhouse and to Oxhey Warren. The London County Council's compulsory purchase order of 1943 lists it as a house and garden of about a third of an acre, owned by the Blackwell trustees. On 1 July 1959, Poor But Proud says, Watford Rural District Council bought it for £2,950.13,18,20,58,59,82,90,98,126,165,170,287

NowThree Rivers District Council's 2019 draft plan for the playing fields still used the name, placing a vehicle gate at Oxhey Warren, Green Lane. Its 2024 plan counts the tree avenue along Green Lane among what is left of the old parkland around Oxhey Place and Oxhey Warren. The site is at the edge of South Oxhey Playing Fields, and we found no date for when the house went.

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Green spaces

Oxhey Woods Local Nature Reserve Still there

ThenWhen the London County Council's purchase of the Oxhey Place estate was confirmed in 1944, some of the woodland was to be kept, and old wood names such as Old Hangings, Young Hangings, Nanscot Wood and Beck Mason's Wood are still used on the reserve's map.5,16,31,191,192,307,308

NowAbout 100 hectares of woodland (Natural England gives 100.21), declared a Local Nature Reserve on 13 June 1997. Natural England's revised list (2026) counts about 92 hectares of it as ancient woodland. A one-kilometre easy-access sculpture trail starts at the reserve's car park.

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Pond Wood Still there

ThenPond Wood is a small wood at Northwick Road and Seacroft Gardens, known for old pollarded hornbeams that were still being cut in the estate's early years. A resident writing on Our Oxhey recalls early plans showing a larger pond beside it, later taken into Oxhey Wood School's field. This was probably Park Pond.5,16,165,296,703

NowIt is still mapped as woodland, and Natural England's revised list (2026) counts its 1.6 hectares as ancient woodland. In 2013 a notably old pollarded hornbeam stood at the road junction.

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Prestwick Road Meadows Still there

ThenOnce farm meadows, where old hedgerows still survive. Three Rivers District Council made Oxhey Woods a Local Nature Reserve in 1997. Natural England records that the same council declared these meadows one in 2004.5,192,704,705

NowA 2.75-hectare reserve owned by the district council, which manages it with the Countryside Service. Natural England lists it as an urban nature reserve. The way in is from Prestwick Road, between Little Oxhey Lane and Heysham Drive, and Natural England puts it about fifteen minutes' walk along Prestwick Road from Carpenders Park station. In spring frogs breed in a seasonal pond, which draws herons too. In summer the meadows stand tall with purple knapweed, yellow bird's-foot trefoil and red clover, and are busy with insects. In autumn the hedgerows feed many kinds of bird.

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Old estate and heritage

Oxhey Chapel in the estate years Built 1612Changed use

ThenThe first council tenants worshipped in Sir James Altham's 1612 chapel from 1948, before All Saints was built next door. Part of the roof fell in during the hard winter of 1962 to 1963, and the chapel was re-roofed with help from a local appeal and the diocese.5,114,317,332,336

NowDeclared redundant in 1976, it has been cared for since 1977 by what is now the Churches Conservation Trust. The Trust lists no regular opening times, only a contact for enquiries.

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Coal duty marker, Little Oxhey Lane Built 1851 or 1861Still there

ThenThe marker is a cast-iron obelisk on a stone base, made by the Falkirk Iron Company, and one of the posts that marked where a tax was charged on coal coming into the London area. Historic England dates it to 1851, but the North Mymms History Project lists it with a type of post put up under the Act of 1861. From 1861 the duty boundary followed the edge of the Metropolitan Police District, and the tax ended in 1889. Our Oxhey reads the lettering as Act 24 and 25 Vict. Cap. 42, the London Coal and Wine Duties Act of 1861, and says the money went to a bridge building fund that helped pay for Tower Bridge.5,46,47,48

NowIt stands beside the railway, south of Little Oxhey Lane, on what is still the boundary between Hertfordshire and Greater London, and has been listed Grade II since 1985. Older photographs show it painted white, on an embankment kept clear of undergrowth to stop fires in steam days. Secure fencing now makes it hard to reach, and the old way to it was the footpath beside Sir James Altham School. Smaller coal duty posts stand in Oxhey Lane, Oxhey Drive and at Batchworth Heath.

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Coal duty marker, Potter Street Hill Built 1861Still there

ThenCoal brought into the London area was taxed, and at first posts marked a boundary about 20 miles from the General Post Office in the City. An Act of 1861 cut the area back to the Metropolitan Police District, and this post marked its edge. It is a white-painted cast-iron post of 1861, made at Henry Grissell's Regent's Canal Ironworks. Posts of this kind are the commonest in south Hertfordshire, and this one is a square pier about one and a half metres high with bevelled corners, a pyramid top and the City of London's crest just below the cap. A raised panel on the front is lettered Act 24 and 25 Vict. Cap 42, the Act of Parliament behind the coal duty boundary. The duty ended in 1889, but many of the posts survived.5,46,47,48,292

NowIt was listed Grade II on 3 October 1985, and the list entry describes it as partly buried. It still stands on the county boundary where Sandy Lane meets Potter Street Hill. Another listed coal duty marker, a cast-iron obelisk, stands on the same county boundary beside the railway near Little Oxhey Lane.

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Oxhey Place, the estate's first clinic (site) Built about 1900 to 1912Demolished

ThenThe Blackwells' mansion, later known locally as the Big House, was new when the county history described it in 1908. After the London County Council bought the estate, Watford Rural District Council requisitioned the house in April 1946, and part of it became offices for the LCC's surveyors and contractors. The house and a building beside it held the estate's first doctors' surgery and clinic. A county maternity and child welfare clinic used rooms in the old staff quarters, and one account puts the very first surgery in a stable-like building next door. A resident remembers being taken here in the early 1950s to see the doctor and to collect dried milk and cod liver oil. Nissen huts stood beside it in 1953. A new health centre opened on Oxhey Drive in 1957. The district council bought the house in 1958 to make it a social centre, but then decided to build a new social centre instead and pull the house down. Poor But Proud says the house had stood boarded up for about a year when fire gutted most of it on 4 July 1960, and it was demolished that summer.18,58,59,108,118,119,122,126,146,153,165,176,279,281,596,706

NowThe 1960s Ordnance Survey shows an empty plot here. In 2012 Poor But Proud described the site as taken up by the Centre, the leisure centre that opened in Gosforth Lane in 2002, together with houses and flats. The leisure centre still stands in this area today.

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Getting about

Site of the 1914 golfers' halt Built 1914Demolished

ThenThe first Carpenders Park station opened on 1 April 1914 to serve the golf course, a wooden halt with two platforms and a footbridge. Its oil lamps earned it the local nickname Paraffin Junction. Each platform was 350 feet long, 9 feet wide and 2 feet 9 inches above rail level, with a booking office and waiting room on the down platform, a small waiting room on the up platform and a signal cabin with six working levers. Golfers reached the down platform by steps and a path from the course, through a kissing gate. The waiting room had fixed wooden seats, walls covered in railway posters and a coal fire kept going with coal the porter gathered off the track. By 1937, as the St Meryl estate grew, the halt was handling some 200,000 passengers a year.74,89,90,397,461,615,618,619

NowBy 1951 it was still two railway sleeper platforms with a small gas-lit wooden booking office and waiting room, and it could not be widened because the steam main lines ran so close, so only a new station would do. It closed in November 1952 when the present station opened, and Our Oxhey says the wooden platforms were taken away and re-used at Shefford in Bedfordshire. Trains now run past the spot.

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Carpenders Park station (1952) Built 1952Still there

ThenThe present station, a short way south of the old wooden halt, came into use on 17 November 1952 and was formally opened on 27 September 1954. Bakerloo line trains called here until 1982. Passengers came down Station Approach by steps or a longer ramp, through the underpass and up a long ramp to the ticket office, passing a machine that sold half a pint of milk or orange for sixpence, cast iron chocolate machines and a cigarette machine, with a ticket collector at the barrier and a paper shop open at peak times.5,64,74,218,219,301,619

NowIt is a London Overground station on the Lioness line. The blue plaque for the centenary of the first station was unveiled at one o'clock on 1 April 2014 before a crowd of more than 50, by a representative of London Overground Rail Operations, with Watford Rural Parish Council paying for it, and an exhibition on the station's history followed at Oxhey Library.

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Churches

St Francis Church (site) Demolished

ThenSt Francis, an inset parish of St Matthew's, Oxhey, stood off Oaklands Avenue, on the Oxhey Hall edge of the estate. A small private primary school of no more than about thirty children used its hall from the 1940s until the late 1950s or, by another account, the late 1960s. The pupils walked through the church to reach the toilets. Wedding photographs of 1958 were taken outside it, and the bride had been the first baby christened there.5,522,584

NowA resident thinks the church was demolished in the 1970s. He says its land later became a Home Office site for police officers, and the houses of St Francis Close now stand there. The pin is St Francis Close.

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Salvation Army hut (site) Demolished

ThenA Salvation Army hut stood on the corner of Hayling Road and Gosforth Lane, at the west end of the estate, where two of its four main roads met. John Swain dates the houses at the western end of Hayling Road to late 1950 in one note and to the summer of 1951 in another. A parade of shops opened close by in Hallowes Crescent early in 1953. A resident remembers a Salvation Army band playing round the streets, and thinks it may have come from Watford. The same resident does not know when the hut was built.5,24,28,111,133,166

NowThe same resident says it closed in the mid 1960s and then stood empty for many years before the present housing was built on the site. The pin is the road junction itself, next to Hallowes Crescent, and the edge of Oxhey Woods is less than 100 metres to the south.

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All Saints Church Built 1953Rebuilt

ThenThe first All Saints was built in 1953 for the new estate (Wikipedia gives 1954), taking over from St Alphege's, a daughter church in Carpenders Park that the first tenants had used. It became a parish in its own right by an Order in Council of 24 March 1961, though the parish history gives 1960.5,101,119,146,154,160,176,488,588,661

NowThe old church closed in 1993 after asbestos was found in its roof, and it stood boarded up until it was demolished in February 2000. Our Oxhey has photographs of the empty church taken just before it was pulled down, and a memory of watching it knocked down. A new church and community building replaced it on the same site. ASCEND works from the building in Gosforth Lane, with a reception staffed by volunteers and a cafeteria, and runs courses, allotment work and help into employment.

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St Martin's Church, Muirfield Road Built 1953Rebuilt

ThenBuilt on Muirfield Road in the early 1950s, St Martin's was home for many years to Brownies, Cubs, Guides, Scouts, the Boys' Brigade and youth clubs. It stood on the corner of Chilwell Gardens and was registered for weddings in December 1955. The Watford Observer photographed its annual fete in July 1963, and that December the appeal to save Oxhey Chapel listed the minister of St Martin's Presbyterian church among its signatories. The Watford Observer also photographed the crowning of South Oxhey's Rose Queen in 1964, and a resident recalls that this yearly event was run by the leader of St Martin's Brownie pack and held at the church. The Rev. Dick Schad was minister while his son, the novelist John Schad, lived on the estate from 1965 to 1981. An extra wing was added to the original building before it came down.5,158,165,176,184,185,506,586,631,707

NowThe first church was replaced in 1989 by a new St Martin's on part of the site, with the houses of St Martins Close around it. In 1996 its minister, the Rev. Mark Ambrose, told the Watford Observer that falling collections, which he partly blamed on the National Lottery, could leave the estate without a permanent minister. The newer building is now hardly used as a church and serves mainly the Community Learning Partnership. The congregation, now United Reformed, shares St John's church in Northwood.

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South Oxhey Baptist Church Built January 1953Still there

ThenIn September 1952 the estate's main contractor, the Unit Construction Company, agreed to let the Baptists a builder's hut on this site for £54 a year. The stones of their own hall were laid on 27 September 1952, and the Baptist church on Gosforth Lane opened on 17 January 1953. A guest performed the opening, with the minister of Bushey Baptist Church, the Rev. Arthur Halden, present, and more than 300 people packed into the service that followed. The hall was 76 feet long and 29 feet wide, seated 225 adults and had no central heating. It was only meant to serve until a permanent church could be built. A resident remembers the first church as a cosy tin building with a corrugated roof, although Poor But Proud describes a hall with cavity walls. The church was registered for weddings on 15 February 1956, and the 1960s Ordnance Survey marks it here. Poor But Proud says the hall could not meet the needs of the growing church, and a plan for a bigger building in 1968 came to nothing. The church, a branch of Bushey Baptist Church until then, became independent in 1970. Later plans, in 1971 and 1991, also came to nothing.5,137,144,165,585,708,709

NowThe church is still active, in a building extended in 2010. Photographs of 2013 show its modernised front.

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Carpenders Park and South Oxhey Methodist Church Built March 1953Rebuilt

ThenThe congregation began in 1944, when a few Carpenders Park members of Bushey and Oxhey Methodist Church started services in The Barn, a converted cow shed in Oxhey Lane. A war damage grant transferred from a bombed Methodist church in St John's Wood paid for a building of their own. Its foundation stones were laid on 30 August 1952, and South Oxhey's Methodist church on Prestwick Road opened on 28 March 1953, though some accounts give 1952. It was registered for weddings in 1954 as the Carpenders Park and South Oxhey Methodist Hall, and a resident recalls that it was only ever built as the church hall, with a full church planned beside it that never followed. The Rev. Stan Weary was minister there in 1956. In the 1960s the hall held yearly competitions between local horticultural societies. The church marked its golden jubilee on 28 March 2003.5,119,145,176,184,215,216,220,580,581,582,596,641,710

NowBy March 2011 Lovell had been chosen to build the first phase of a scheme to redevelop the Clitheroe Gardens site, which included the church, and the second phase was to bring a new church and community centre. The last of the old building was demolished on 17 October 2013, and a new church opened a few yards away in January 2014. The same Clitheroe Gardens scheme included a new Clitheroe Club, and an Age UK Hertfordshire health and wellbeing centre was launched there on 28 November 2014.

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St Joseph's Catholic Church Built 1960Still there

ThenThe Catholic parish was set up in 1952 for the new estate, and a presbytery and a school came first, the school in about 1955. Until the church was ready, St Joseph's hall served as the church, and weddings were held there, including one photographed in 1957. Children at the school each brought a penny a week towards a brick for the new building, and parishioners were asked to give part of their income at mass, which a mother of five pupils remembers as expensive. This large brick church, designed by Archard & Partners, was built in 1960, though Poor But Proud says it was completed in 1961. Its wide nave and narrow aisles follow the usual church plan of the years before the Second Vatican Council. It was registered for weddings at the end of 1961 and consecrated in 1981. When the Watford Observer reported a cash crisis in the estate's churches in 1996, St Joseph's was less badly hit, with a congregation of about 500 giving an average of £2,000 a month, enough to support the church.5,119,149,176,177,489,711,712

NowIt is still the church of the Catholic parish of Carpenders Park and South Oxhey, in the Diocese of Westminster, on the south side of Oxhey Drive. Mobile phone masts now stand on its tower.

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Community buildings

The LCC estate office, 37 Oxhey Drive Built late 1940sChanged use

ThenThe London County Council built its estate office at 37 Oxhey Drive, where new tenants collected their keys and where repairs were reported. Rent collectors went round the houses at first, and later tenants could pay at the office instead. The estate's own painters, carpenters, glaziers and grounds staff worked from a yard behind it, entered from Seacroft Gardens, with a greenhouse for the plants that went into the estate's shrub beds.5,455

NowFlats were built on the site of the yard and a road now runs behind the office. Our Oxhey's page of 2012 describes the office building as still standing, and we found no date for when it stopped being the estate office. The position is approximate, taken from the Seacroft Gardens junction.

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The Clitheroe Club Built 1950Rebuilt

ThenPoor But Proud dates the club for older people 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. Its hall was named the Embling Hall after James H Embling OBE, the first head of Oxhey Wood junior school, who was a founder member of the management committee and its chairman for many years. Members remember bingo, a Knit and Natter group, a warden who lived in a house opposite the club, and coach holidays to Devon, Cornwall and Yarmouth.5,113,217,220,511,640,644

NowThe last of the original building was demolished on 17 October 2013 and flats were built on its site, with the new club standing a few yards away. An Age UK Hertfordshire health and wellbeing centre was launched there on 28 November 2014, with a drop-in, a hot meal every weekday, quizzes, yoga and clinics for feet, hearing and eyes.

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The estate's first library (site) Demolished

ThenThe estate's first library opened in June 1951 in Little Oxhey Lane, in a converted farmhouse of two rooms up and two down, with an outside lavatory, a hot plate for the kettle and upright paraffin heaters for warmth. It stood next door to a family home and served the estate until the Bridlington Road library opened in May 1962.5,125,601

NowOur Oxhey says the farmhouse was pulled down for the road up to the new swimming pool, and that the community pool then covered the site. That pool, the Sir James Altham Pool, closed in 2020 and did not reopen. The pin marks roughly where it stood. The building was very probably the old farmhouse of Little Oxhey Farm, which has a pin of its own a few yards away.

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The Submarine Club (site) Demolished

ThenThe Submarine Club was the old working men's club, under the station walkway on the side away from South Oxhey, according to a man who was on one of its outings. That side of the railway is Carpenders Park, where the St Meryl estate had begun to be built in 1935, about a decade before the council estate. A resident says she met her husband at the club in September 1952, while he was on leave from the army, and believes her brother and his friends helped to build it. A charabanc outing to Southend set off from the club in the 1960s.5,89,382,616,646

NowThe man who went on one of its outings says that when the club was pulled down a new working men's club was built near the shops at the top of Hayling Road, but he gives no date. Hartcran House, on Gibbs Couch beside the railway, was built in the early 1980s, as the local historian Neil Hamilton remembers. No source we found says whether it took the club's site. In 2016 the council approved turning its offices into 21 flats, and the conversion has since been completed. The position is approximate, at the foot of the walkway on the Gibbs Couch side.

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Parish council offices and police station, Oxhey Drive Still there

ThenWatford Rural parish dates from 1894 and has covered only the area around South Oxhey and Carpenders Park since boundary changes in 1952. The local historian Neil Hamilton says the estate's police were first based in old cottages at the Gosforth Lane entrance to Oxhey Woods, which were pulled down around 1952. The new police station on Oxhey Drive opened in January 1953. Behind the council offices lay a works yard. The 1960s Ordnance Survey marks the police station next door, with Pond Wood behind it. Hamilton knew the yard as the council depot, and photographed it from the police station roof before and after it was pulled down, probably in the early to mid 1990s. During the demolition he saved London County Council papers, including early 1950s shop front plans for Station Approach and St Andrew's Road.5,126,140,141,156,165,207,208,264,290,455,456,458,713

NowOn 7 April 2011 the offices hosted the first public open day of the South Oxhey Initiative, the consultation that led to South Oxhey Central. It drew 370 visitors, who marked their choices on display boards with green sticky dots. In June 2026 Three Rivers councillors agreed that the parish council could write its own neighbourhood plan. The parish council still has its offices here.

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The Cow Shed and Fayer Hall (site) Built by 1956Demolished

ThenA black wooden workmen's hut on Oxhey Drive, near Oxhey Wood Junior School, became the estate's community centre and was known locally as the Cow Shed. By October 1956 it was the address of the South Oxhey Times. Residents remember dances and live music there, and a local singer performing, though for teenagers there was little else beyond the ice cream parlour. The wooden building burned down and a block building took its place, used as the Fayer Hall scout hut.5,131,150,166,233,492

NowFayer Hall was demolished in March 2017 to make room for the car sales and repair company moving out of the corner of Station Approach, which was on the site by December 2017. A new scout hut had been built near the Pavilion on the playing fields by then. The position on Oxhey Drive is approximate.

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Health centre, Oxhey Drive Built 1957Still there

ThenIn the early years the estate's doctors and baby clinic worked from the old Oxhey Place mansion. One account says the doctors began in a stable-like building beside Oxhey Place, moved to a house in Prestwick Road and then settled in a permanent surgery in Oxhey Drive, just past the police station that opened in January 1953. A new health centre on Oxhey Drive was finished late in 1957, and a resident remembers one of the first GPs working there. Another resident remembers a club for new mothers at the clinic in 1958 and 1959, but does not say which building the clinic was in. A local listing says the old mansion stayed the medical centre until the fire of 1960, but Poor But Proud says the house had been boarded up for about a year by then. In March 1999 the surgery in Hallowes Crescent, threatened with closure two years before, was revived, with a doctor from the Oxhey Drive health centre working there two days a week. Poor But Proud calls this good news for many residents, especially older ones, who had needed two buses and a long walk to reach the Oxhey Drive surgery. In 2013 a contributor to Our Oxhey wrote that the surgery past the police station was still there.5,108,118,119,126,140,146,153,176,281,486,596,597,598

NowGP practices now work from South West Herts Health Centre and The Consulting Rooms, both on Oxhey Drive. Manor View Practice, which also has surgeries in Borehamwood, Bushey and Watford, runs a surgery at South West Herts Health Centre. Wikipedia names The Consulting Rooms as the largest of the Oxhey Drive surgeries.

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Civil Defence headquarters, 39 Oxhey Drive Changed use

ThenThe building next to the police station in Oxhey Drive was the Civil Defence headquarters, with rooms and garages for its ambulance and equipment. A Boots the Chemist assistant of 1961 remembers her senior colleague working for it.5,198,199,209,211

NowThe garages are long gone. The building was used by social services for some years, held the temporary library from the summer of 2008 to August 2009 while the Bridlington Road library was being extended, and from 11 May 2011 housed Step Up, a drop-in with training and counselling rooms run by ASCEND and Herts Mind Network with district council funding. More than a hundred people came to the open day. The position is approximate, worked out from the police station and the house numbers.

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Oxhey Library Built 1962Still there

ThenThe estate's first library opened in June 1951 in Little Oxhey Lane, in an old farmhouse, and this library on Bridlington Road replaced it in May 1962, though Poor But Proud gives 20 June.5,25,119,125,196,198,199,602

NowExtended with £1.4 million from the Big Lottery Fund, it reopened on 5 September 2009 and is still a county council library. While the work went on the service ran from a temporary building at 39 Oxhey Drive, the old Civil Defence headquarters, from the summer of 2008 to August 2009.

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The Crescent Club (site) Built 1971Demolished

ThenThe Crescent Club, once the Services Club, was a social club in Hallowes Crescent, and work on its building began on 6 November 1971. A resident remembers having to queue for a seat at the weekend entertainment in its good years, and darts, pool and dominoes teams the club could be proud of. In its last years it kept going on private money put in by a few individuals.5,126,228

NowThe Watford Observer reported on 12 November 2010 that the club and its garages were to become four three-bedroom flats for Paradigm Housing, which called the building under-used, but by June 2012 that scheme was not going ahead. The club was demolished in September 2016 under the South Oxhey Initiative instead, and the new flats in Hallowes Crescent were finished by April 2018. The position is approximate, beside the shops.

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South Oxhey Leisure Centre Still there

ThenA local listing places the Oxhey Place mansion in this area. Watford Rural District Council completed its purchase of Oxhey Place in September 1958, planning to make it a social centre, but it soon decided to build a new social centre instead and pull the house down. Fire gutted the empty house on 4 July 1960. The 1960s Ordnance Survey shows the ground empty after the fire. The council's £60,000 Social Centre opened in Gosforth Lane on 2 June 1965. In April 2001 the rebuilding of The Centre in Gosforth Lane, talked about for five years, was set to go out to tender. One reason given was that the old building was in a poor state of repair. The new Centre, a £4.5 million leisure and sports centre, opened on 28 September 2002, with a dance studio, a gym, a recording studio and an art room with a pottery kiln. When architects presented plans for a new pool and leisure centre to Three Rivers District Council on 31 January 2014, the building was only eleven years old, but Poor But Proud says its sports courts were too small, it overheated and lacked daylight, and its changing rooms were unsuitable.5,108,126,146,153,165,176,596,600,601,706,714

NowBuilding work began in February 2019. In July 2020 the council said that, with the new facilities opening here, the Sir James Altham Pool in Little Oxhey Lane would not reopen. The centre reopened in September 2020 after a project of about £9 million that added a 25-metre pool and a teaching pool. Everyone Active runs it for Three Rivers District Council, and in October 2025 the council announced a £400,000 refit of the gym, paid for by Everyone Active, to be done that December.

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Homes and streets

Hayling Road, the first homes Built 1947Still there

ThenIn November 1947 the first tenants, a couple from Paddington, were given the keys to a Hayling Road house with three bedrooms and a kitchen big enough to eat in. A walnut tree said to have been planted at the request of Mrs Blackwell, of the family that owned the Oxhey estate before the council, stood by the road until high winds brought it down in March 1999.5,13,23,24,31,527

NowHayling Road still runs along the southern edge of the playing fields, with several entrances to them from the road.

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Woodhall Lane and the concrete houses Built 1948Still there

ThenAs well as brick and rendered houses, the estate had factory-made types: Cornish and Stent houses, and steel-framed BISF houses known locally as tin houses. The LCC's opening pamphlet of November 1947 says the prefabricated types planned for the estate had Ministry of Health approval for a life of 60 years. A Stent house of precast concrete on the corner of Woodhall Lane was photographed in 1948. A resident writing on Our Oxhey remembers moving into the lane in July 1948, when its roads and pavements were unmade and there were no street lights. The present Carpenders Park station came into use on 17 November 1952. One Our Oxhey writer says that leaving it by the proper route meant a long walk round to Woodhall Lane, so some passengers crossed the live rails and climbed a fence onto the lane instead, and a number were electrocuted. Woodhall School opened in 1954. Some concrete houses were later found defective, and a resident who moved into Prestwick Road in about 1954 remembers the outer walls there being taken down and rebuilt in brick about fifteen years later.5,25,28,31,64,115,117,139,438,452,453,693,715

NowMost of the estate's original housing has since been substantially renovated. Because many homes had been bought by their tenants under the Right to Buy, the defective prefabricated houses were repaired in stages, to different budgets and specifications. A photograph of 2013 shows the same corner Stent house still standing. Woodhall Primary School is still on the lane, which is now in Carpenders Park ward.

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Nanscott House and Beck Mason House Rebuilt

ThenNanscott House was a block of flats in Prestwick Road, next to the Methodist church of 1953. In January 2011 its tenants were looking forward to moving into new homes being built beside Clitheroe Gardens. By March 2011 Lovell had been chosen to build the first phase of a redevelopment at Clitheroe Gardens, a site holding sheltered housing, the Clitheroe Club and the Methodist church. That phase was to be a £1.5 million scheme for Sanctuary Group, with twelve flats and two bungalows for affordable rent. A second phase was to bring eight flats, a new community centre and a new church, and a third phase 23 flats. Demolition of the block began in August 2011.5,38,145,191,210,215,216,307,641,642

NowThe last of the old Methodist church came down on 17 October 2013, and the new one a few yards away opened in January 2014. New residents moved into Beck Mason House, built as part of the same scheme next to the new Methodist church, in May 2015. The building work in Clitheroe Gardens and Prestwick Road was finished that spring. Both names match old woods on the Oxhey Place estate, Nanscot Wood and Beck Mason's Wood, though no source we found says the blocks were named after them. The two woods are still part of Oxhey Woods, one on each side of Prestwick Road. The position is approximate.

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Silkin House and Corbett House (site) Built 1963Demolished

ThenBefore the flats, a resident remembers the field holding the remains of Nissen huts and rows of concrete bases, and children were told the huts had housed prisoners of war. He also remembers the neighbourhood bonfire there. Watford Rural District Council commissioned two eight-storey blocks here in 1960, with 24 homes in each according to Municipal Dreams. Tower Block UK says building started in 1962, with the firm of W Old as contractor. A former St Joseph's pupil remembers the two blocks starting to go up in the early 1960s, when his short cut to school crossed the grounds of a knocked-down big house. The blocks were finished in 1963. Local historian Neil Hamilton places them on Lincoln Drive, opposite St Joseph's School, and the 1960s Ordnance Survey shows them in Matlock Crescent, between Lincoln Drive and Ainsdale Road. He remembers a fine view of the estate from the roof of Corbett House. They were still standing in 1988, the date of Tower Block UK's photograph.31,157,165,300,440,570

NowBoth blocks have since been demolished. Neil Hamilton says the work took a long time, because the balconies down each side were far more heavily reinforced than anyone expected. We found no date for the demolition. Our Oxhey photographed the houses built on the site in 2013, and houses still stand there.

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Schools

Warren Dell Primary School Built 1949Still there

ThenThe Ordnance Survey map revised in 1896 already names Warren Dell, a small wood north of today's school. The school was named after the dell, where rabbits were plentiful. It was the first junior and infant school on the estate. Its first head master, Mr C. C. Warburton, began teaching here in May 1949, and it was officially opened on 2 July 1949 (John Swain gives 16 May). Our Oxhey puts 600 children on the roll. Numbers were so high at first that children came for half days only, and a former pupil remembers a week of mornings, then a week of afternoons. The estate's first local produce show was held here in September 1950. Mr Neal was head by the mid 1950s and Mr Southey by the end of the decade. Poor But Proud's timeline says Colnbrook School opened in the old infants' buildings on Hayling Road in 1964. In 1993 the Watford Observer announced a community festival here for the May Day bank holiday. For the estate's fiftieth anniversary in 1998, Warren Dell children wrote poems and songs about the old walnut tree in Hayling Road.5,28,58,113,119,123,187,310,525,526,527,571

NowIt is still a primary school, on Gosforth Lane. Colnbrook, in its old infant school buildings, is now a separate county council special school, and OpenStreetMap still shows a small wood north of the school, where the 1896 map marks Warren Dell.

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Oxhey Wood Primary School Built 1950 to 1951Still there

ThenThe first part opened in May 1950, and the school was officially opened on 7 June 1951 as two schools, the juniors under Mr J Embling and the infants under Miss Maiden, and the two were merged in 1969. Falling numbers closed one wing in 1982, and it then held a WRVS office, Cassio College adult education classes and practice rooms for the Falcon Marching Band before falling into disrepair. Part of it came back into use as classrooms in 1993. Every child in the school had a hand in a large wall picture painted in the junior playground in the 1990s.5,24,127,533,716

NowIt is still a primary school on Oxhey Drive, and a Sure Start children's centre was added on its site in the 2000s. The rest of the old wing was rebuilt in the refurbishment of 2005, when most of the Little Furze children transferred in. The school marked its sixtieth anniversary on 7 June 2011.

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Hampden School (site) Built 1950Demolished

ThenHampden Secondary Modern opened on Little Oxhey Lane in 1950, built to take the post-war rise in the number of children, and photographs show its buildings from the playing fields in about 1951 and a sports day in 1951 or 1952. From 1967 it was part of Sir James Altham School, which later used this site alone until it closed in 1989.31,124,146,165,169,180,717,718

NowPart of the school land was sold for housing on Altham Way, where the Oxhey Jets football club moved into its Boundary Stadium in 2000 to 2001. The rest, including the old pool, is where the county council approved an adult day centre in August 2024, with extra care homes proposed beside it.

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Clarendon School (site) Built 1951 to 1952Demolished

ThenClarendon Secondary Modern opened in September 1951 and was completed in September 1952 in 19 acres of woodland, with blocks named after people from local history, among them Altham and Carpender. In 1967 it joined Hampden School to form Sir James Altham School, which closed in July 1989. John Swain gives 1967 to 1977 for the years this site carried on as Sir James Altham Upper School, while a resident who photographed it when it closed remembers 1975.128,165,174,180,194,195,551,573,574,717

NowThe Capel, Carpender and Ascham blocks came down in the late 1970s and the Morison and Altham blocks made way for housing, leaving Clarendon Block in use as a community centre for about twenty-five years. It was photographed inside on 13 August 2002 before demolition and again on 5 October 2002 once demolition had begun, with former pupils coming back for a last look. The day centre on Northwick Road uses buildings that were once part of the school, and another part was used for years by the Industrial Therapy Organisation. By 2013 houses and flats had been built on the old school ground.

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Greenfields Primary School Built 1951 to 1952Still there

ThenBuilt in 1951 to 1952 to a design by H. T. Swain of Hertfordshire County Council, with a steel frame and precast concrete panels. Historic England calls it the first of the second generation of Hertfordshire schools built on the prefabricated Hills system, which had tighter plans after the Ministry of Education changed its cost controls. John Swain, writing on Britain from Above, dates its opening to 8 September 1952, the same month as Little Furze. A pupil of the 1960s remembers Mr Donaldson and then Mr Roberts as head, and says its children went on to Clarendon School. It was listed Grade II on 30 March 1993. The list entry describes a single-storey building set around an open courtyard, with a tall hall that has a fully glazed end window, a lower dining room, and classrooms glazed above a low band of solid panels.5,24,28,136,566,567

NowIt is still a primary school, and still listed Grade II. It is a non-faith community school run by the county council, for children aged 3 to 11. The Historic England list entry gives the school's address as Prestwick Road, but its address today is Ellesborough Close.

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Little Furze School (site) Built 1952Demolished

ThenLittle Furze Primary opened in September 1952 with 600 places, on a sloping 13-acre site beside Oxhey Woods. An air raid siren stood on a wooden post on the corner beside the school in its first years. A pupil who started in 1962 remembers the ground floor classrooms being taken over by a school for disabled children, which built a swimming pool beside the dining room. Mr Silvani, who had taught for many years at Oxhey Wood, was head for some years in the 1970s. Hangers Wood School, the county special school on the site, closed in 1994.119,135,165,188,555,562,564,565,577,578,719,720

NowLittle Furze closed in December 2004. Poor But Proud's timeline puts a serious fire a year before the closure. John Swain writes that several of the original buildings were pulled down after the fire, without saying when it happened, and a neighbour thinks the school had closed first. The empty buildings had been broken into and boarded up by March 2013, and local reports put the county council's spending on securing the site at about £800,000. Three Rivers District Council announced in January 2021 that the site would take one care home replacing two local ones, plus flats. Low plastic fencing went up in 2022 to catch slow worms for removal to the grounds of Chorleywood House, demolition began in late July 2022 and the building was flat by the end of September, and a stone crusher turned the rubble to gravel. A ground breaking ceremony with the county council and invited guests was planned for mid-November 2023, and building work was well under way by March 2024. Furzewood Lodge, a care home with 75 bedrooms run by Quantum Care, has since opened on the site.

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Woodhall Primary School Built 1954Still there

ThenFamilies were living in Woodhall Lane by July 1948. Before enough local schools were built, many children from the estate travelled to schools in Watford or even back in London. The local historian David Reidy, whose family came from London in 1948, was taken by bus at first to Beechen Grove School in Watford. In a comment on an Aerofilms photograph taken on 14 April 1949, John Swain points out the site of the future Woodhall Junior School. A resident who grew up next door to the estate's first library, a former farmhouse on Little Oxhey Lane, says the land opposite lay unused for a long time until Woodhall School was built there. It opened in 1954, across the road from Hampden School, and took infants and juniors from streets such as Bramshaw Gardens and Leven Close. David Reidy remembers joining the brand new school that year. Former pupils of the 1950s and 1960s remember a Woodhall Infants and a Woodhall Junior School. Hampden merged with Clarendon in 1967 to form Sir James Altham School, which closed in 1989.5,23,28,115,125,128,147,148,180,181,254,474,715

NowIn August 2024 the county council approved an adult day centre on the old Sir James Altham site across the road. Woodhall is still a county council primary school on Woodhall Lane. The Department for Education lists it as a mixed community school for children aged 3 to 11, with nursery classes.

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St Joseph's Catholic Primary School Built c.1955Still there

ThenThe Catholic parish was set up in 1952 for the new estate, and a presbytery soon followed. The school was built for the new parish, in about 1955 according to Taking Stock and Wikipedia, which would put it before the 1960 church, though another local listing suggests around 1960. A parent remembers each pupil bringing a penny a week towards a brick for the new church. A pupil remembers the head master, Mr Pitt, sending the children home early one November morning in 1961 as heavy snow began to settle. The 1962 outing was a coach trip to the paddling pool at Cassiobury Park. Silkin House and Corbett House, two eight-storey blocks of flats, were built between 1962 and 1963, and local historian Neil Hamilton places them opposite the school. A pupil of the early 1960s remembers passing the two new blocks on his walk there.5,141,149,157,177,300,440,566,568,569,570,578,596

NowBoth blocks have since gone, and houses stand on their site. In 2013 Neil Hamilton found old metal fencing on the school's boundary with Paddock Spring swallowed by trees and shrubs, and suggested it may mark the edge of the Oxhey Place grounds. A neighbour says a spring seems to rise at the school gates. It is still a Catholic primary school on Ainsdale Road, voluntary aided, for children aged 3 to 11.

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Colnbrook School Changed use

ThenThe map of the 1890s names Warren Dell, a small wood north of today's Hayling Road, and Our Oxhey says the name came from the many rabbits in the area. The estate's first school, Warren Dell in Gosforth Lane, took its first pupils in May 1949, and John Swain says its infants' school was not finished until later that year. A local listing says this was originally Warren Dell's infant school. A former pupil writes that she started at Warren Dell Infant School, now Colnbrook. She remembers drawing round wooden animal shapes and playing with salt dough the teacher had coloured, and staying until Oxhey Wood School was finished. Poor But Proud's timeline dates the change to Colnbrook to 1964. When the century-old walnut tree in Hayling Road fell after high winds in March 1999, the Watford Observer said pupils from Colnbrook and Warren Dell had studied its growth every year.5,24,58,119,123,310,526,527,571,596,721,722,723,724

NowColnbrook is now a county council special school for primary-age children with learning difficulties, autism or speech and language needs. The county council's directory lists 130 children on the roll and links to its papers on expanding the school. Route 328 stops at Colnbrook School, the stop parkrun names as the nearest to its start on the playing fields. A small unnamed wood still stands where the map of the 1890s marks Warren Dell.

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Shops and the centre

Little Oxhey Lane shops Built 1949Still there

ThenThe LCC's opening pamphlet of November 1947 records 502 steel houses going up in the south-east corner of the site, next to Little Oxhey Lane. The steel houses around the lane became known as Tin Town. The estate's first three shops opened here in April 1949, and a post office followed on 3 July 1950. Shops stayed scarce. A county education report of June 1951 counted only six shops on the whole estate, for 14,000 people. A resident who moved in about August 1951 remembers that the nearest shops and bus stop were here, so door to door salesmen called often. Photographs of 1960 show staff of Pinner Green Bakery, which traded in the small row of shops, and the 1960s Ordnance Survey marks a post office here. A view over the houses towards Woodhall Lane was taken from the balcony of the shops in 1968.5,23,25,113,117,142,165,438,450,473,594,595

NowOur Oxhey's photographs of 1968 and 2013 show one of the tin houses directly opposite the parade. The parade is one of the estate's smaller ones, with flats above the shops. Shops still trade there. OpenStreetMap lists a pharmacy among them, and the bus stops beside the parade are named Shops.

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St Andrew's precinct (site) Built early 1950sDemolished

ThenThe estate's central shopping centre dates from the 1950s. The Three Rivers Museum Trust says it opened in 1952, although Poor But Proud dates the start of work to 1953. Its main shops were on St Andrew's Road, which was later closed to traffic to make a pedestrian precinct. Locals called it the big shops, with Sainsbury's, Woolworths, the Co-op and Boots below flats, and a regular market. A Boots the Chemist assistant of 1961 remembers her shop standing between Sainsbury's and Lipton's, with a wet fish shop, a record shop, bakers and a gents' outfitters along the same block. In June 2009 the parade ran from Jacksons to Homecraft by way of Wimpy and the empty Woolworths, and by 2011 Boots had closed and the Peace Hospice shop had taken its unit.5,23,25,119,165,211,234,374,462,725

NowIt was demolished in stages from 2018 for South Oxhey Central, and new blocks of flats now stand where it was. Oxhey Library holds photographs of the road in the 1990s, and one of it before it was closed to traffic.

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Hallowes Crescent shops Still there

ThenThis parade served the west end of the estate, and a resident who grew up nearby remembers a hardware shop with the sub-post office, a baker, a butcher, a grocer and a chemist. Kelly's Watford Directory records the parade shop by shop for 1953, 1956 and about 1960, with a fishmonger, fruiterer, dairy, baker, butcher, newsagent, chemist and hardware store, and a sub-post office added by 1956.5,132,133,228,604

NowThe Crescent Club, once the Services Club, stood close by until it was demolished in 2016, and by April 2018 new flats stood on its site. A post office still trades here.

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Station Approach and the new square Built 1954Rebuilt

ThenThe shops at Station Approach opened in 1954, the year the new station was formally opened. Barclays first traded on The Parade in Prestwick Road and moved to Station Approach in the early 1960s. A member of staff who worked in both branches between 1963 and 1972 lived in the flat above the Station Approach bank. The branch closed early in 2015, and in 2017 the bank and the other buildings in Station Approach were demolished as part of the South Oxhey Initiative, the regeneration plan that became South Oxhey Central.5,34,126,143,207,248,357,612

NowNew shops were open here by October 2018, beside a new station square. A Lidl opened on 3 November 2022 at the corner of Prestwick Road and Oxhey Drive, and all 659 homes of South Oxhey Central were finished by autumn 2024.

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Pubs

The Dick Whittington Built 1957Still there

ThenA county education report of June 1951 found no pubs on the estate at all. At a meeting at Hampden School in January 1952, officials said pubs were among the things planned. The Dick Whittington, on Prestwick Road at the corner of Little Oxhey Lane, was the first of the estate's five pubs to open. Poor But Proud dates its opening to 1957, and local historian Neil Hamilton gives the same year. The Jet followed in 1959, and by the end of 1961 the Pheasant, the Grapevine and the Pavilion, in the old golf clubhouse, were all open too. From the estate's early years an open strip between Muirfield Road and Ashridge Drive was kept clear for an orbital road. Local historians say it would have crossed Prestwick Road near the pub on a flyover. The scheme was later dropped. The pub was refurbished and taken over by new management in January 2017, though by December 2019 it was looking neglected.5,25,113,119,126,142,165,230,237,365,429,490

NowMunicipal Dreams noted in 2022 that the Jet, the Pheasant (later the Ox) and the Grapevine had been pulled down for housing and the Pavilion was boarded up. The Dick Whittington is the only one of the five still trading. CAMRA lists it as open daily, with a veranda, pool, darts and a garden.

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The Jet (site) Built 1959Demolished

ThenThe Jet opened in 1959 on Hayling Road at the corner of Holmside Rise, where the 1960s Ordnance Survey marks a pub. It closed in January 2006, and that April the district council's licensing committee unanimously refused an application to reopen it. Poor But Proud says the pub had given local residents five years of trouble and that Councillor Kerron Cross led the opposition to the licence. It had been boarded up for some time when a strong fence went round it in January 2011, and it was demolished on 15 March 2011. In January 2016 Countryside's application for South Oxhey Central took in the cleared plot, about 0.2 hectares and raised above both roads, as one of three smaller sites. The plans put four houses in a terrace facing Holmside Rise, two facing Hayling Road and two set at an angle to face the corner, all for private sale.5,119,146,165,176,227,234,360,361,365

NowEight three-bedroom houses were built on the site. Work was under way in February 2017, and the houses were finished that September, on sale at around £490,000. Named Hayling Place, they were among the first homes of the South Oxhey Central scheme, and the first residents moved in during October 2017.

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The Pheasant, later The Ox (site) Built by 1961Demolished

ThenOpened as The Pheasant and later renamed The Ox, this pub stood on the west side of Bridlington Road, just south of the library and across the road from the shopping precinct. It was open by 1961.25,119,165,237,596

NowIt was demolished on 4 May 2018 during the redevelopment of the area, and housing now stands on the site, as it does on the sites of the Jet and the Grapevine.

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The Grapevine (site) Built December 1961Demolished

ThenThe Grapevine opened in December 1961 on the corner of Prestwick Road and Heysham Drive, behind a large car park, and the council's planning records for the site go back to 1960. The 1960s Ordnance Survey marks it as a pub. An application to extend it followed in 1973. An outline plan of 2011 to replace the pub with 10 small houses was withdrawn. An application of 2014 to turn part of the car park into a hand car wash was approved, and that November the council's plan of housing sites earmarked the site for homes. Planning officers described the pub in 2017 as a two-storey building facing the road junction, with large single-storey additions to the sides and rear, and a block of garages and an area of woodland behind it. That year permission was given for 33 flats, with the officers noting that the Dick Whittington was about half a mile away.126,165,235,236,389,390,726

NowDemolition began in January 2018 and the site was cleared the following month. Building started that February on The Chess, 33 homes and the first scheme of Three Rivers Homes, the joint venture between Watford Community Housing and the district council. Bugler Developments of Rickmansworth built it. In October 2018 the council said eight homes would have one bedroom and 25 would have two, with 18 for market rent, 10 for social rent and five for shared ownership. The Chess was finished in 2019 and now stands on the site.

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