EPW049509 ENGLAND (1935). Dorset Drive, Cavendish Drive and environs, Canons Park, 1935

Station Road

Station Road

Witchurch Lane in the direction of St Lawrence's church

The Truth Hall, where the Covenanters met and the in the 1950's the 2nd Edgware scouts band held their practice nights.

The Railway Hotel, rebuilt in 1931 in beautiful "brewers' Tudor".

J. Salmon and Son Ltd, hardware store, here rehoused just 20 or so feet back from its original Church Lane location.

The Ritz cinema, built 1932. Built on marshy ground, the organ pit was prone to flooding!

The Forum

The Mason's Arms

A formal pond surrounded by an extensive rockery in the area beyond the pergola. Good 'Homes and Gardens' design.

By comparison with the rather standardised front gardens, probably set out by the builder, there is a great variety of back garden designs. Some are rather formal while several have substantial rockeries that were popular at the time. One feature is missing from nearly all of these more expensive suburban detached houses. There are no vegetable patches. To find these in the picture one has to move across to the back gardens of the more humble houses on the right hand side of the picture. The greatest difference today is the amount of tree growth and the much less formal back gardens, many of the patterns and features seen here in the original designs having been lost. Some have been 'developed' with sheds (possibly garden offices) and children's play houses and other features that break the often to be seen symmetry of the original designs.

Formal front gardens - indeed almost a standard design of drive to garage, path the front door and areas of grass in between surrounded with narrow flower beds. Today the formality has gone, most front gardens being rearrange to provide parking with just a little garden left in most cases, but at least one completed concreted over. What this does to change the hydrology is probably far worst then building the houses in the first place, causing increased rapid runoff and greater potential flooding in the drainage system. This visual and physical change is clearly an unintended consequence of street parking charges and restrictions. Another fine example of how the car has changed so much of our environment.

Line of trees marking an old field boundary.

Red and ream tube train on the UERL line to Edgware.

Edgware London and North Eastern Railway branch from Finchley and Highgate. Closed to passengers 1939 and goods 1964. There was a plan in after the closure in 1939 to double and electrify the branch from Mill Hill East to Mill Hill (The Hale) but it was one of those schemes that folded in September 1939.