Warren Dell Primary School
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
The Ordnance Survey map revised in 1896 already names Warren Dell, a small wood north of today's school. The school was named after the dell, where rabbits were plentiful. It was the first junior and infant school on the estate. Its first head master, Mr C. C. Warburton, began teaching here in May 1949, and it was officially opened on 2 July 1949 (John Swain gives 16 May). Our Oxhey puts 600 children on the roll. Numbers were so high at first that children came for half days only, and a former pupil remembers a week of mornings, then a week of afternoons. The estate's first local produce show was held here in September 1950. Mr Neal was head by the mid 1950s and Mr Southey by the end of the decade. Poor But Proud's timeline says Colnbrook School opened in the old infants' buildings on Hayling Road in 1964. In 1993 the Watford Observer announced a community festival here for the May Day bank holiday. For the estate's fiftieth anniversary in 1998, Warren Dell children wrote poems and songs about the old walnut tree in Hayling Road.5,28,58,113,119,123,187,310,525,526,527,571
Now
It is still a primary school, on Gosforth Lane. Colnbrook, in its old infant school buildings, is now a separate county council special school, and OpenStreetMap still shows a small wood north of the school, where the 1896 map marks Warren Dell.
Mentioned in
- Oxhey Chapel: Open again to visitors Before the Estate
- Life on the Estate: Schools Life on the Estate
- Schools: No schools at all Life on the Estate
- Schools: Warren Dell, the first school Life on the Estate
- Schools: Colnbrook and special education Life on the Estate
- Clubs, sport and events: The first clubs, fetes and produce shows Life on the Estate
- The heart of the estate Walk
- Schools, churches and shops Walk
Position from OpenStreetMap. See Sources and method.