IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Dukes Avenue, EDGWARE, HA8 7RX

Looking along Dukes Avenue in Edgware.

Looking along Lake View near the junction with Dukes Avenue in Edgware.

Once visitors to Canons Park had passed Image they would have entered this straight road with their first view of the Canons Park mansion ahead. Today lofty coniferous trees line the route and shield the houses on the estate from the road.

These almshouses were built by Charles Day in 1828. There are eight of them on a 1 acre plot fronting onto Watling Street at Stone Grove which he bought from All Souls College. During his lifetime Day selected the almspeople. By his will, he conveyed the almshouses and land to trustees, leaving sufficient money to provide an endowment of £100 a year for the upkeep of the property and weekly payments to the almspeople. In selecting almspeople the trustees were to give preference to parishioners of Edgware and Little Stanmore, providing that they did not sell or drink intoxicants, swear, or break the Sabbath. The almshouses consist of a long single-storied range in an early-19th-century Gothic style with steep gables, pinnacled buttresses and a slate roof. The front is faced with stone ashlar and has Gothic arcading below the eaves and verges. In the central gable, which is flanked by two smaller ones, is a clock and the date 1828.

This is Stone Grove in Edgware which is part of the A5 from London to Holyhead. The fact that the A5 runs almost dead straight from Marble Arch through Kilburn and Cricklewood to beyond Edgware makes it obvious it is following a Roman road - in this case Watling Street, which ran from Canterbury through London to Wroxeter. For more about the history of Watling Street see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watling_Street

Looking north west.

1960s flats built along Stonegrove

Postbox HA8 706.