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Anns Close, TRING, HP23 4HA

A cul-de-sac off Buckingham Road, with three pairs of semi-detached houses on each side

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

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.

The ceremonial way in which this car is being hoisted on board a lorry carrying the name "Metal Recycling" suggest that the car has well and truly come to the end of the road.

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.

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

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.

One of the changes from the original plan, seen here, is the drive to the garage and grassed front lawn have been replaced by a paved area allowing several cars to park.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.

Some of the parked cars have left for work, leaving almost bare patches where they were parked. The road has not yet been salted but cars have left tyre marks and perhaps brought some salt in on the treads from Miswell Lane. The trees on the left are between the Green left as a play area between the two parts of the estate, and were planted in about 1970. Unfortunately the two nearest trees died from vandalism. They were probably already dying when this picture was taken.

Weavers Road is a cul-de-sac with three pairs of semi-detached houses on each side. One house has converted the original garage to a room, and built a garage on the side. Most properties on the estate do not have sufficient room for this to happen.