IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Highfield Road, TRING, HP23 4DX

This fire started in the roof and fortunately no one was hurt. http://www.hemeltoday.co.uk/news/more-news/infamous-glis-glis-is-blamed-for-house-blaze-1-6943894 It is believed that the fire was caused by Glis glis (the edible dormouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_dormouse ) chewing its way through a cable.

This part of the road consists of mid-20th century houses, although there has been some infilling. Unfortunately the black cat didn't prove lucky for the people who lived in the fire-damaged house on the left. Image

This footpath is the rerouted ancient footpath that ran between Tring and Drayton Beauchamp. On the right are the back gardens of the terraced houses, Nos. 7-15 Buckingham Road. Originally dustbins were left here and the dustmen came and collected them, but now bins have to be left on the edge of the road.

One of the changes from the original plan, seen here, is the drive to the garage and grassed front lawn have been replaced by a paved area allowing several cars to park. The lawns were also open, but in many cases the boundaries are marked with flower beds, low fences, etc.

When there is a heavy fall of snow priority goes to clearing through roads, especially those with buses, such as Miswell Lane. Only later (after this picture was taken) are house estate roads such as this one cleared by spreading salt. Note the number of parked cars both on the road and on drives. When the estate was first occupied around 1970 most houses only had one car - which was often parked in the garage. Some forty years later many houses have two or more cars and the garage is used as a storage area.

The houses at the east end of the road were built in the late 1960s and have two basic designs – 3 or 4 bedroom semi-detached – with some being joined to form short terraces.

After some 40 years of use holes are starting to appear in the road and on limited areas the top surface is removed and replaced. The side road in the background is Anns Close

The houses on the left form one of the rows of terrace houses in the first development on the estate.

This part of the footpath almost certainly follows the line of the original way over the fields, but is now fenced in so tightly that it is unsuitable for use by bicycles.

A very routine operation for the person doing it, but one well worth recording for posterity. When I was writing the First World War book "The London Gunners come to Town" I was very interested in how Hemel Hempstead Borough Council kept the town running - and I was unable to find a single 100 year old photograph showing a Council workman at work. Most of the lamp posts in the road have been replaced with metal ones in recent years, but this post is one of the original concrete lampposts.