Burnt Oak Brook - Watling Estate

Burnt Oak Brook
The Brook flows southwards

Post to the west Edgeware
Post to the north Upper Hale
Post to the east Mill Hill
Post to the south Burnt Oak

Abbots Road
Menorah Grammar School. Independent Jewish secondary school established in 1978.  This is in the buildings of what was Orange Hill Central Schools.
Orange Hill Central Sschools opened in 1932 with a two-storey front range with stone surrounds to windows and a stone gateway. It became a grammar school in 1948 and from 1965 boys only. It became Orange Hill Senior High School in the early 1970s as a mixed comprehensive and then merged with Moat Mount School as Mill Hill County High School to the north of Mill Hill Village.

Cressingham Road
Watling Clinic

Deans Lane
Footpath and entrance gate. This is roughly at the point at which the Finsbury Park/Edgware line crossed the road. Until c.1996 the trackbed to the west of Deans Lane was known as the 'Mill Hill Old Railway Nature Reserve' and it was possible to walk to where the viaduct crossed over the Northern Line. There is now a secure fence and a path which acts as road access to the Northern line dept. Under the road the trackbed had been narrowed and now formed a footpath.  This now appears blocked with trees and undergrowth.

Hale Drive
The line of the Finsbury Park/Edgware Railway lies behind the houses for much of Deans Lane and forms a postcode boundary along this section.
Deansbrook Infant and Junior School

Orange Hill Road
Watling Centre. Built for the Watling Community Association in 1931 by Granville Smartfield. Residents had formed the Watling Association in 1927 and the community centre was opened by the Prince of Wales in 1933 and continues to function
St. James' Catholic High School. Founded in 1934 by the Dominican Sisters to provide Catholic secondary education for the children of the parishes of north-west London. It was then the only mixed non-selective Catholic school. In 1949 St. Thomas' Independent School in Stanmore was annexed to St. James' and in 1997 the school was moved to a site in Colindale
Buckle Court.  Thus was Orange Hill House Built in 1877 by John Blundell Maple of the furniture store and later the home of Claude Graham White. It is in red brick with terracotta and brickwork in the manner of Norman Shaw. It later became St Rose Convent belonging to Dominican Sisters. In 1931 they opened a school next to the church for boys and girls of all ages and eventually St James School was built. They also opened a private school in the convent which was now called St Rose's. The site is now housing.
Lodge and stables by J.G. Buckle, with coloured and moulded brickwork

The Meads
The Meads Open Space - Park for the northern part of the Watling Estate
The Annunciation RC Junior and Infant Schools

Watling Avenue
Burnt Oak Leisure Centre. Run by GLL

Watling Estate
Named from its proximity to Watling Street, the Roman road on the line of the current Edgware Road (A5). The Watling Estate was built by the London County Council on the site of Goldbeaters Farm between 1931 and 1939. It had 4,000 houses, only surpassed in size by Becontree. It was laid out under G. Topham Forrest on garden city principles.

Watling Park
Open space was left and created throughout the Watling estate. Much of it follows the meandering course of the Burnt Oak Brook, and old trees from Goldbeaters Farm were kept. Watling Park was park opened in 1931. It was was landscaped with paths, pedestrian bridges and mature trees

Sources
British History. Hendon. Web site.
Clunn. The Face of London
Field. London Place Names,
Mill Hill County School. Web site
Pevsner & Cherry.  London North
Smyth. City Wildspace
Stevenson. Middlesex
St.James School. Web site

Comments

Tony Kerrison said…
I think you'll find that the LCC Watling estate was built in the 1920s. My mother moved to Oldberry Road with her parents when she was 9 yrs old, - so that would've been about 1927. I was born in the house at 34 Oldberry in November 1946. TK.

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