Estate timber yard, Paddock Spring

Then

Local 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}

Now

Walking 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.

Mentioned in

• Farms and fields: The timber yard at Paddock Spring Before the Estate
• The old woods: Oxhey Woods, part by part Before the Estate
• Farms and lost houses Walk

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