EAW022130 ENGLAND (1949). The South Oxhey Housing Estate under construction around Hayling Road, South Oxhey, 1949

By the time this London County Council housing estate had been largely completed at the beginning of Coronation Year in 1953, 17,000 folk had been re-housed, mostly from the bombed-out slums in north and east London, on Green Belt land between the GLC boundary and Watford, in South-West Herts.

This estate became one of the most significant post-WWII developments in the London Region, with the majority of the 17,000 inhabitants moving out from the over-crowded, war-damaged Metropolis into this greenfield site.

After years of planning and debate, building of this vast new London County Council estate commenced in October 1946. The first tenants, Mr & Mrs Caldwell, moved into their new, brick-built house on Wednesday, November 26th, 1947, at 50, Hayling Road. These images were taken approximately half way through the construction of Oxhey Estate and 1,468 of the planned 4,200 dwellings had been finished by September 1949. However, the provision of social amenities was totally inadequate: there were no schools, shops, pavements, street lights, telephones, churches or clubs until the early 1950s. When the main phase of building was finished in 1953, the population had reached a peak of 17,000, compared with only 7,000 when this photograph was taken.