IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Napsbury Lane, ST. ALBANS, AL1 1DU

This is the eastbound carriageway viewed from the Napsbury Lane bridge, and the view in the opposite direction to Image

The bridge and slip road for the B5378.

Looking west from the bridge on the B5378.

The North Orbital Road was an early precursor to the M25 Motorway and was planned in the 1920s as a road circulating around the north side of London at about a 20 mile radius of Charing Cross. It was planned to start at Colnbrook on the A4 and, skirting past Rickmansworth, St Albans, Hatfield, Hoddesdon, and Brentwood, to terminate at Tilbury, a distance of about 75 miles. In the event only sections of it got built before the Second World War intervened. Some sections of it were then planned to be incorporated into Ringway 4, the outermost of the four London ringways that were designed, but never built, in the 1970s. This is one of the original sections of the road to the south of St Albans, viewed from the Napsbury Lane bridge. The Ordnance Survey 6" to 1 mile map of 1925 does not show it, but the 1938 Edition does, which gives a clue at to when it was built.

I took this to demonstrate that Jack's Image was originally assigned to the wrong grid square Image However it is informative to compare the two images. In 2009 the same production/warehouse units are apparently still to let nearly four years on, while two more have been advertised in the interim, which demonstrates the stagnation and lack of demand in the commercial property market as much as anything else. The North Orbital Commercial Park is off Napsbury Lane off Image

Entry is controlled so I have no idea of the businesses.

View northward, towards St Albans, Bedford and the North; ex-Midland main line, London St Pancras - Bedford - Leicester and the North. The train is being hauled by a BR Standard 9F 2-10-0 (No. 92019), which were well able to run at express speed.

The section between Bedford and London St Pancras was one of the last parts of the Midland Railway to be built, being completed in 1868. This is the view from the North Orbital Road bridge, with the suburban tracks on the left and the intercity lines on the right. About 600 metres down this straight section is the site of the former Napsbury station (opened in 1905 and closed to passengers in 1959) which had a siding off to the left to the former Middlesex County Mental Hospital. A link line off to the right leading to the Watford Junction to St Albans Abbey railway at Park Street was built to assist in the construction of the Midland line, but was disconnected soon after completion and never used for public traffic.

Looking north from the bridge on Napsbury Lane