St Joseph's Catholic Church

Then

The 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}

Now

It 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.

Position from OpenStreetMap. See Sources and method.