IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
St. James Road, WATFORD, WD18 0EA

Located on the pedestrianised part of Vicarage Road near the football ground, the Two Trees Micro is exceptionally small, even by micropub standards. Internally there is a limit of 20 customers. On this day it was celebrating its first birthday and the cake can be seen inside.

Collins English Dictionary defines a precinct as an enclosed area or building marked by a fixed boundary such as a wall. Vicarage Road Precinct does not seem to quite fulfil that definition. It is however a long-established pedestrianized section of Vicarage Road, with retail units on either side beneath flats. The buff stone tablet in the brickwork to the right is dated 1881.

Occupation Road runs down the east side of Watford FC's Vicarage Road ground and this is the rather unassuming "Players' and Match Officials' Entrance". The structure to the left is the east stand and this is the oldest at the ground, that the club have occupied since 1922. Up the hill are further turnstiles to the ground and just visible at the top of the hill is the doorway entrance to Image

Occupation Road is a private service road that runs along the north side of the Vicarage Road stadium.

The Oddfellows is just around the corner from Vicarage Road Stadium so is a popular location on matchdays. In the fairly recent past it used to be called "Mac's Bar". Looking at the old Victorian Ordnance Survey map of the area dated 1871-1882 it is evident that these houses and the pub, on the west side of Fearnley Street, were the first to be built in the area and formed an enclave, along with the cemetery to the rear of them, separate from the rest of Watford, and called Colney Butts.

The Red Lion is in Vicarage Road and opposite Watford Football Club's stadium. As such it was the home supporters' pub for many years. In fact the Red Lion easily predates the football ground, and the Ordnance Survey map of 1871 shows it, the Union Workhouse and the Cemetery as the main, and indeed virtually the only, features in the hamlet of Colney Butts. The present building dates from 1895 and was designed by the architect C P Ayres. It is locally listed. The text across the front reads:- THE RED LION BENSKINS CELEBRATED WATFORD ALE & STOUT The pub was bought by Watford Football Club in 2006 with various intentions of turning it into a club shop, offices and houses, but plans for these were withdrawn late in 2008. In February 2009 Saracens Rugby Club, who share the Vicarage Road stadium with the football club, expressed an interest in taking it over. Currently it stands empty and boarded-up.

Please see Image for a square-on view of The Red Lion and some history of this now-closed pub, the stable block of which can be seen beyond it. The large building on the left is the back of the Vicarage Road stand of Watford Football Club.

See for a good description of the history of the building up to 2009 when it was boarded up - see http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1322048 It must have opened again but closed in January 2014. However it now appears to be open yet again albeit there is a sign above it advertising three luxury apartments!

The Cemetery was opened in 1858 and covers about 5.6 hectares or about 14 acres of land. It is now full for ordinary burials. Although it is now surrounded on three sides by Victorian housing, when it was opened it was in open countryside, away from the centre of Watford in the hamlet of Colney Butts. The original site was rectangular but was extended to the west in late Victorian times before the houses in West Watford were built. This chapel was built as the Episcopal Chapel, there being a separate chapel for Dissenters to the north.