44Schools

Little Furze School (site)

Built 1952Demolished

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Then

Little 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}

Now

Little 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.

The former Little Furze School on Gosforth Lane (closed 2004), 2019. © Shaun Ferguson, Geograph (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Building work on the site of the former Little Furze School, with Oxhey Woods on the slope behind — The site of Little Furze School in July 2024, under construction, with Oxhey Woods on the slope behind and Furzewood Care Home at the top. John Swain attended the school between March 1953 and July 1954. John Swain, published with his permission (All rights reserved)

The cleared site of Little Furze School looking west, a new road curving across it, diggers at work and Oxhey Woods along the skyline — The cleared school site in July 2024, looking west along the line of the 1952 to 2004 buildings, with Oxhey Woods on the skyline and the houses of Gosforth Lane to the right. Taken from the builders' office with the site manager's permission. John Swain, published with his permission (All rights reserved)

Mentioned in

Farms and fields: The field names Before the Estate
Life on the Estate: Schools Life on the Estate
Schools: Oxhey Wood Life on the Estate
Schools: Little Furze Life on the Estate
Schools: Colnbrook and special education Life on the Estate
Schools: What became of the schools Life on the Estate
Visit and look for: Where to find more Visit

Position from old Ordnance Survey maps and OpenStreetMap. See Sources and method.