Prestwick Road

The name

Prestwick Road takes its name from Prestwick Golf Club. The club hosted the very first Open Championship in 1860 and staged the Open 24 times up to 1925.

Where the club's facts come from: History - Prestwick Golf Club, the club's own history.

How sure we are of the match: Strong

The estate's streets were named after golf courses. The streets page explains how each match was made.

In the story

• Oxhey Golf Club: The end of the club
  John Swain reckons the estate took more than a quarter of the playing area. On Our Oxhey he puts it at about 30 per cent, saying that building Hayling Road and Prestwick Road cost about that share of the lower, eastern end of the links, between Green Lane and the railway embankment, so the course had to be redesigned and was no longer of championship length.
• The old woods: Oxhey Woods, part by part
  Today Prestwick Road and Oxhey Drive divide Oxhey Woods into three parts.
• Hole 1
  The hole ran north up the strip between Green Lane and Prestwick Road, later part of the Oxhey Park nine-hole course, to a green near the Green Lane and Prestwick Road junction.
• Hole 3
  The tee falls on today's Prestwick Road. The hole ran south along the strip between the road and the main line, and its green now lies in the belt of trees beside the railway.
• Hole 4
  The hole ran west-south-west from Prestwick Road, across ground now covered by Ralston Way and Puttenham Close, to a green in what are now the Colnbrook School grounds off Hayling Road.
• Hole 5
  The hole ran north-east over the grass past the Warren Dell trees to a green in the open grass west of Prestwick Road.
• Hole 6
  The tee was in the rough grass about 75 metres west of Prestwick Road.
• Building the Estate: The plan
  As built, four main roads carried the estate: Prestwick Road, Hayling Road, Oxhey Drive and Gosforth Lane, with many short closes opening off them.
• Life on the Estate: Churches
  Within about ten years five congregations had buildings of their own: the Baptists in Gosforth Lane, the Methodists in Prestwick Road, All Saints beside the chapel and St Martin's in Muirfield Road, all of about 1953, and the Catholics, who used St Joseph's hall until their church on Oxhey Drive was built in 1960, or 1961 by one account.
• Schools: No schools at all
  Coaches picked children up on Little Oxhey Lane opposite the Dick Whittington and in Prestwick Road, and the Watford schools they went to included Beechen Grove, Watford Fields and Victoria Girls'.
• Churches: The Methodist church, Prestwick Road
  The church in Prestwick Road opened on 28 March 1953, though some accounts give 1952, and was paid for by a war damage grant transferred from a bombed Methodist church in St John's Wood.
• Shops, pubs and services: Doctors, the clinic and the health centre
  General practice was spread across ordinary houses for years. One doctor held his surgery in his own house at the end of Heysham Drive, and the practice worked from a house in Prestwick Road near the bottom of Kilmarnock Road before it moved to the surgery in Oxhey Drive past the police station.
• Getting about: The wooden station
  A woman who moved to Prestwick Road in 1951 remembers the station as still just a wooden platform.
• Clubs, sport and events: The first clubs, fetes and produce shows
  On a Saturday in June 1950 the community association borrowed undeveloped plots at the corner of Prestwick Road and Fairfield Avenue and put on a fete.
• Change and renewal: The road that was never built
  An open strip between Muirfield Road and Ashridge Drive, already clear on early aerial photographs of the estate, was kept for an orbital route that Our Oxhey identifies as Ringway 3. Neil Hamilton says it would have crossed Prestwick Road near the Dick Whittington on a flyover and cut straight through the estate.
• Rebuilding the centre: Why the centre was rebuilt
  People wanted a better market and a community hub, and felt that Prestwick Road or Oxhey Drive would be the best frontage for a new market square.
• The playing fields: From golf course to playing fields
  A pitch-and-putt course followed in the early 1960s, on the strip between Green Lane and Prestwick Road rather than on the fields themselves, which is where John Swain places it and where Oxhey Park Golf Club was later laid out.
• Visit and look for: Where to find more
  In 2010 John Swain wrote that copies were in the reference section at Oxhey Library in Bridlington Road and in the clubhouse at Oxhey Park golf club in Prestwick Road.
• Schools, churches and shops
  The Clitheroe Club for older people began in Clitheroe Gardens in 1950, and the Methodist church opened on Prestwick Road in 1953.
• Walks
  756 Seventeen people came on the first health walk, which crossed Hayling Road onto the playing fields, went through a small wood, passed the Pavilion and came back along Prestwick Road.
• Site of the estate nursery
  The nursery site lies in the central part of the woods, between Prestwick Road and Oxhey Drive, just north of the junction where the two roads meet.
• Prestwick Road Meadows
  The way in is from Prestwick Road, between Little Oxhey Lane and Heysham Drive, and Natural England puts it about fifteen minutes' walk along Prestwick Road from Carpenders Park station.
• Health centre, Oxhey Drive
  In the early years the estate's doctors and baby clinic worked from the old Oxhey Place mansion. One account says the doctors began in a stable-like building beside Oxhey Place, moved to a house in Prestwick Road and then settled in a permanent surgery in Oxhey Drive, just past the police station that opened in January 1953.
• Woodhall Lane and the concrete houses
  Some concrete houses were later found defective, and a resident who moved into Prestwick Road in about 1954 remembers the outer walls there being taken down and rebuilt in brick about fifteen years later.
• Nanscott House and Beck Mason House
  Nanscott House was a block of flats in Prestwick Road, next to the Methodist church of 1953.
• Greenfields Primary School
  The Historic England list entry gives the school's address as Prestwick Road, but its address today is Ellesborough Close.
• Station Approach and the new square
  Barclays first traded on The Parade in Prestwick Road and moved to Station Approach in the early 1960s.
• The Dick Whittington
  The Dick Whittington, on Prestwick Road at the corner of Little Oxhey Lane, was the first of the estate's five pubs to open.
• The Grapevine (site)
  The Grapevine opened in December 1961 on the corner of Prestwick Road and Heysham Drive, behind a large car park, and the council's planning records for the site go back to 1960.

On the timeline

• June 1950 The community association holds its first fete on undeveloped plots at the corner of Prestwick Road and Fairfield Avenue, among piles of bricks and scaffolding.
• 1952 Two shops, a bank and an off-licence open in Prestwick Road, the bank being the estate's first Barclays branch.
• 28 March 1953 The Methodist church in Prestwick Road opens, paid for by a war damage grant from a bombed church in St John's Wood.
• 1957 The estate's first pub, the Dick Whittington, opens on Prestwick Road, and the new health centre is finished late in the year.
• 1963 A pitch-and-putt course opens on the lower end of the old golf links, between Green Lane and Prestwick Road.
• 25 September 1990 The government confirms that Three Rivers may sell the Prestwick Road shopping centre to its tenants for £440,000.
• 1991 A small nine-hole course, Oxhey Park Golf Club, opens between Prestwick Road and Green Lane.
• August 2011 Demolition begins on Nanscott House in Prestwick Road, and new residents move into Beck Mason House, built as part of the same scheme, in May 2015.
• 17 October 2013 The last of the old Methodist church in Prestwick Road is demolished, and the new church a few yards away opens in January 2014.
• 2019 Oxhey Park Golf Club, the nine-hole course laid out in 1991 between Prestwick Road and Green Lane, is listed as closed.
• March 2020 The council agrees to give the market its own space on Prestwick Road, with water and power for up to fourteen stalls.
• 3 November 2022 A Lidl supermarket opens on the corner of Prestwick Road and Oxhey Drive.

Close by

Buildings

• The Clitheroe Club 130 m
• Carpenders Park and South Oxhey Methodist Church 140 m
• Nanscott House and Beck Mason House 180 m
• Woodhall Lane and the concrete houses 200 m
• The LCC estate office, 37 Oxhey Drive 250 m

Ancient woods

• Sandpit Wood, railway strip 60 m
• Pond Wood 160 m
• Oxhey Woods, central part (Ashen Spring) 670 m

Walk stops

• Clitheroe Gardens 140 m
  Schools, churches and shops walk
• Pond Wood 220 m
  The heart of the estate walk
• Health centre and police station 340 m
  Schools, churches and shops walk

Distances are in a straight line from a point on the street.