The streets

The London County Council began building the South Oxhey estate in October 1946, partly on the old course, and gave its new streets golf names.^3,23,115 The council board says only that a number of nearby roads are named after famous courses, while Three Rivers Museum Trust says every street on the estate was.^14,23 Later housing brought in other local names, such as the Altham streets on former school land, which recall Sir James Altham, builder of Oxhey Chapel.^5,19,31 We found no official list, so the matches in the table are our own, made from the club names and graded by confidence. Each street page says how sure we are, and links to where the club's own facts come from, usually the club's history page. By our count most of the original estate streets match a real club and a few do not, so the truth sits between the two claims.

A few names stand out. Prestwick Road shares its name with the Ayrshire club that staged the very first Open Championship, in 1860.⁶⁹⁶ Muirfield Road matches the course where Ted Ray, Oxhey's new professional, won the Open in 1912, and Ganton Walk matches the Yorkshire club he left to come here.^71,92 Kilmarnock Road started life as Ashdown Road and was renamed because it was being confused with a similar street in Bushey.¹¹⁵

The missing number 13

People who live here will tell you there is no number 13 in South Oxhey. We have not found anybody who wrote that decision down, though John Swain says he learned of the missing 13 himself from David Reidy, the editor of Poor But Proud, so it may well be noted somewhere in that book and simply not yet found.²⁸⁹ It is not on Our Oxhey and not in the Watford Observer, so we cannot say who made it or why. The addresses themselves, though, bear the story out.

We looked at every house sale registered in the estate's postcodes since 1995, and counted only the streets where both number 11 and number 15 have sold, so that the numbering certainly runs through that stretch.⁶⁹⁷ Seventeen of the eighteen streets that pass that test have no 13 at all.⁶⁹⁷ Ferndown Road runs 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 and then 15, and Hoylake Gardens, Barnhurst Path and Hindhead Green do the same.⁶⁹⁷ Nothing numbered 13 has ever been sold on Hayling Road, Prestwick Road, Muirfield Road or Gosforth Lane.⁶⁹⁷

It is not quite true that there is no 13 anywhere. A handful of addresses carry one, on Furze Close, Redwood Close, Burnley Close, St Annes Close, Fairhaven Crescent and Fairfield Avenue, and on the new flats at Blackwell Place and Hampden Place.⁶⁹⁷ Those are later closes and the rebuilt centre rather than the streets of 1946 to 1953.⁶⁹⁷

It was not a London County Council habit either. We ran the same test on the council's other out-county estates, and at Debden, Harold Hill, Hainault, Borehamwood and St Paul's Cray between 54 and 78 per cent of the streets do have a 13, much like central Watford at about two thirds.⁶⁹⁷ Councils still differ on this. Warwick forbids leaving the number out, while Gedling leaves it out unless somebody asks for it, and Three Rivers publishes no policy at all.^698,699

We asked the council. Three Rivers District Council answered a Freedom of Information request on 19 October 2026, and its answer is useful in two directions.⁷⁰⁰ It holds no record of the original numbering of South Oxhey, and none of any decision to leave out 13 here.⁷⁰⁰ That is not surprising once you know why. Three Rivers only came into being on 1 April 1974, and street naming and numbering before that was the business of Watford Rural District Council, which was abolished at the same moment.⁷⁰⁰ So the papers, if they exist, are in the Watford Rural District files at Hertfordshire Archives rather than in any council office.^700,701

The other direction is more interesting, because it suggests this may not have been an Oxhey decision at all. Asked about the practice, the council says plainly that "historically the number 13 was not used in street naming and numbering", though it is unsure when that changed.⁷⁰⁰ On that reading nobody sat down and decided to leave 13 out of South Oxhey. It was simply how addresses were done, and the estate was numbered by people doing the ordinary thing. The council's current rules say the opposite in as many words: "The No. 13 is no longer removed", and numbers are not removed for religious or cultural reasons either.⁷⁰⁰ Somewhere between the two the custom was dropped, and the council cannot say when.⁷⁰⁰

If you have seen the Watford Rural District numbering papers, or you live at a number 13 on the estate, we would still like to hear from you at [email protected].