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Dist:0.2km<br/>Sun rising at 6:39 on Saint Valentine's day 2003, view from Davis Row towards West Drive on the left and tower at the former The Arlesey Three Counties Asylum/Fairfield Hospital.
©Malcolm Campbell
Dist:0.3km<br/>Just one motor vehicle on a normally busy mud track. Previously known as Paradise Row. The home in the foreground to the left was The Stag Public House which opened in 1868 and closed in 1926.
©Malcolm Campbell
Dist:0.4km<br/>For a variety of reasons we didn't. This is typical of the houses in Arlesey. Note the light coloured brick. This is made from clay dug locally and turned into bricks by a (largely) italian immigrant workforce near to the village.
©Robin Hall
Dist:0.4km<br/>Small independent fuel retailers find it difficult to compete against the oil giants and the supermarkets and the small garage here has lost its forecourt dispensing pumps some time ago.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.5km<br/>The Church is on the west side of the High Street and was opened in 1981 at a cost of £85,000.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.5km<br/>You can just about pick out the name of Biggs Wall underneath the roof parapet in the side wall above the fire escape stairs. Biggs Wall came to Arlesey in 1967 so the building probably dates from then but they were later subsumed into the Morrison group who still have a presence on the site. The building itself is now called Hampden House and is a business centre with floors and rooms let out to various enterprises.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.5km<br/>Only a little over four years on from Robin's [[72513]] and the pub has joined the remorseless and seemingly irreversible trend of closures. Even the building's Grade II Listed status has failed to save it. The English Heritage Listed Buildings website describes it thus:- "18th Century. Timber framed construction with colourwashed roughcast render. Thatched roof, half-hipped to W end. 3-room plan, one storey and attics, gable end to road. Variety of casement windows, all small with glazing bars. Eyebrow dormer to N elevation. 20th Century porch to N elevation. Red brick chimney stacks, one to ridge, one to each gable end. Single storeyed addition adjoins to E gable end, weatherboarded and thatched, with casement windows." The north elevation with the eyebrow dormer is this one. Comparing the older image with this one the other obvious change is the erection of the bus shelter in the period since 2005.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.5km<br/>Heavy rain caused a flash flood this afternoon. Photo taken from the junction of Chapel Drive and High Street at 3:42 pm after about twenty minutes torrential rain.
©Malcolm Campbell
Dist:0.5km<br/>Right on the edge of the square, The Three Tuns is one of two pubs in it. The buildings behind are new houses. This village has seen a lot of development in the last couple of years.
©Robin Hall
Dist:0.5km<br/>Recreation ground at Arlesey looking towards Fairfield prior to re-development
©Malcolm Campbell
Dist:0.6km<br/>A southbound InterCity 225 train hurtles underneath the footbridge at the end of Hospital Road.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.6km<br/>The Great Northern Railway was completed through here in 1850 and a station, called Arlesey Siding and named because of the sidings to the nearby brick works, was built here in 1866. With the expansion of the nearby Three Counties Lunatic Asylum the station was renamed Three Counties in 1886. It closed in 1959. Looking at old maps the actual site of the station was about two thirds of the way towards the distant Mill Lane road bridge. This was the site of a fatal railway accident in 1876 when a northbound express passenger train collided with a derailed luggage train.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.6km<br/>Nigel Cox has already recounted the event of the 1876 accident at the former Three Counties Station [[1921593]] (then called Arlesey Sidings) on the Great Northern Railway, the site of which is in this view. The accident occurred on the 23rd of December. There were five immediate deaths (including the driver and fireman of the northbound express) and amongst the seriously injured were Mr. and Mrs. Burbidge who were travelling to spend Christmas with relatives in Nottingham. Mr. Burbidge was taken to the Three Counties Asylum (which later became Fairfield Hospital and is now converted to flats and called Fairfield Hall) where he died on the 18th of January 1877. Several doctors diagnosed that Mrs. Burbidge would not survive and she was taken to the nearby Lamb Inn (now long-gone) but she laid there for three years. It was then decided that she should be taken to Nottingham but she was so ill and weak that the journey was abandoned. A house was acquired for her in Walsworth Road Hitchin, where she stayed in continuous pain until her death in 1909, nearly 33 years after the accident, never again having left the house or, indeed, her bed. Another more fortunate casualty of the accident was Mr. J. F. Welsh who was seriously injured and laid in Hitchin Hospital for two years. He did eventually recover and resumed his studies at Oxford. He was ordained and became Bishop of Trinidad in 1905. Information Source: Lawson Thompson Scrapbooks, Hitchin Museum.
©John Lucas
Dist:0.6km<br/>I was disappointed to find this pub "The Mallard" is now a day nursery. The pub was so called because the train passed this spot (note the railway bridge to the left of the house) on the day that it broke the record for the fastest steam driven train in the world. A few yards further east and this would be in the next square.
©Robin Hall
Dist:0.6km<br/>This car park serves a large office block and cement works in Arlesey. This is behind the Biggs Wall building.
©Robin Hall

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