IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Maylands Road, WATFORD, WD19 6JS

Although by its very nature as a housing estate originally built by London County Council to provide homes for Londoners whose residences had been destroyed or damaged during the Second World War, there tends to be a lot of uniformity in housing designs on the estate, there are a few locations where unusual styles have been used. Here in Mundesley Close for example the first floors have a tiled mansard-type roof over a standard brick-built ground floor.

The church was founded in 1952 to serve the London County Council built South Oxhey housing estate. The church was built here, on the south side of Oxhey Drive, in 1960 and consecrated in 1981. Its website is here http://www.rcdow.org.uk/CarpendersPark/ The Church belongs to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Westminster. Despite being such a large building with a prominent tower overlooking South Oxhey it is difficult to photograph being surrounded by houses on its eastern, southern and western sides. As can be seen this tower has been an obvious target for mobile telephone companies wishing to use it for mounting their masts. From a Geograph point of view the Ordnance Survey's 193000 metre gridline runs through the church, from right to left in this photograph, so the opposite and southern side of the structure is in Image

Moortown Road leads south off Maylands Road, part of the London County Council built estate at South Oxhey dating from the early 1950s.

The South Oxhey housing estate was originally one of several built by the London County Council outside London in the immediate post-war years of the late 1940s and early 1950s to provide residences for Londoners whose homes had been damaged in the war or were otherwise of poor quality. Management of the estate passed to the Greater London Council in 1965, and eventually, in 1980, to Three Rivers District Council, although it is estimated that at least 70% of the property is now privately owned. Offerton House is one of several original blocks of flats of very similar design on the estate and is on the north side of Oxhey Drive.

The large London County Council development at South Oxhey was built in the early 1950s to relieve overcrowding in the inner city, where much of the housing stock had been lost due to wartime bombing. The houses here are typical of local authority estates of the era including this terrace on Oxhey Drive. The houses were generally well-built and relatively sizeable with decent gardens - in some ways better than their equivalents built for the private market. They must have seemed like paradise for many of their first residents. Today a majority of the houses at South Oxhey are privately owned.

I'm not certain of the date of this photograph but believe it to have been taken in the late 1930s

Forfar House is an apartment block which, together with two similar blocks, overlooks a green off Oxhey Drive. Part of Filton House can be seen in this picture. The estate at South Oxhey was developed by the then London County Council (LCC) in the early 1950s, one of a number built on the fringes of London to help relieve overcrowding in the inner city area. It was not actually within the LCC's area and is still within the modern boundaries of Hertfordshire today. In 1980 the Greater London Council (which had absorbed the LCC) passed the ownership and management of the estate to Three Rivers District Council. Today, a large proportion of the housing stock is privately owned and the remaining social housing has been transferred to a housing association.

For as far as the eye can see both sides of this straight section of Oxhey Drive are lined with these Fastigiate Hornbeam trees (Carpinus betulus 'Fastigiata').

This library on Oxhey Drive must be one of the southernmost outposts of Hertfordshire County Council's Library Service. Writing about Hertfordshire County Council reminds me that in the 2009 County Council elections the votes cast in the South Oxhey Division were: British National Party: 783 Labour Party: 756 Conservative Party: 671 Liberal Democrat: 446