Silkin House and Corbett House (site)
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
Before 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
Now
Both 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.
Mentioned in
- Building the Estate: Prisoners of war Building the Estate
- Building the Estate: The builders Building the Estate
Position from old Ordnance Survey maps and OpenStreetMap. See Sources and method.