Site of the estate nursery
Drag the round handle to slide between the old map (left) and today (right). On a phone, tap the map once to move it.
Then
W. 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
Now
The 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.
Position from old Ordnance Survey maps and OpenStreetMap. See Sources and method.