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The viaduct was originally built, and is still in use, to carry local trains from Bushey to Watford High Street stations over the valley of the River Colne. The diverted loop of Watford's Lower High Street now passes through two of the arches on the north side of the river while the remaining arches straddle the car park of the unsurprisingly named Arches Retail Park.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.1km<br/>With the River Colne flowing downstream towards the photographer, kids were sledging down the hill to the right in the December snow of 2009.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.2km<br/>Viewed looking westwards and downstream towards the Lower High Street bridge.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.3km<br/>Viewed from the Colne Valley Retail Park. The River Colne runs in the concrete conduit beyond the near railings to the left.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.3km<br/>This is a picture of the location where the now disused Croxley Green branch (closed in 1996) diverges from the mainline. The branch may be re-used in the future as part of a Metropolitan Line extension to Watford Junction.
©Hywel Williams
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©Nigel Chadwick
Dist:0.3km<br/>Located outside the former Church of St James each panel of the War Memorial records the names of about twenty men who gave their lives in the First World War. This is an extraordinary number when you consider the comparatively small size of the neighbourhood of terraced houses that would have existed at that time.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.3km<br/>This well-known landmark is a five arched viaduct completed around 1835 to take the London to Birmingham Railway over the London Road. Only the central arch, on the left here, is skewed. The others, including the two out of the image to the left, are square on to the railway. The underside of the newer metal viaduct installed on the eastern side when the railway was widened is just visible. Today the A411 road passes eastbound through this skewed central arch but this is also a roundabout with traffic passing through the far arch too. The cost of the construction of the viaduct in the 1830s was £9,700. The buildings visible through the arch are on Chalk Hill.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.3km<br/>The railway from Watford to Rickmansworth (Church Street) through Watford High Street station was originally opened in 1862 and subsequently taken over in 1881 by the London & North Western Railway (LNWR). However it was not until some fifty years later, and just before the start of the First World War, that the LNWR built the connecting lines between Bushey and Watford High Street stations and between Bushey and Rickmansworth (Church Street) stations, creating a triangular junction in the process. This bridge carries the last surviving section of these railways and the junction, between Bushey and Watford High Street stations, over Lammas Road. The No Waiting road signs define the parking restrictions in place whenever the Watford Stadium at Vicarage Road is in use for match days.
©Nigel Cox
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©Nigel Chadwick
Dist:0.3km<br/>Viewed from Lammas Road, I think this was formerly a Chapel of Ease in the Parish of St Mary.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.4km<br/>Bushey is a misnomer really because the station is in Oxhey, and the centre of Bushey is about a mile away. This is the eastern entrance and gratifyingly the ornate station clock with its train weathervane was telling the right time. During the ordinary working day Silverlink operate a half-hourly service to London Euston from here with a scheduled journey time of 19 minutes.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.4km<br/>The trials and tribulations of Watford FC during December 2009 when the club narrowly missed being placed into administration have been well-documented. Here an experiment by the club to turn the snowy conditions to their advantage by freeing up their usual goalkeeper to play in the outfield came to a premature end when a drunken reveller decapitated the Queen Victoria look-alike stand-in.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.4km<br/>I have to confess to being less than 100% certain about the identification of this building in Elfrida Street. Watford Borough Council's Listed Building file shows "The former St James Church, Lammas Road, built 1890s, tall nave with aisles, overburnt brickwork with yellow brick details, consecrated 1913, later additions (eg chancel in 1928)". Lammas Road is at the end of Elfrida Street here, but the Ordnance Survey 6" to 1 mile mapping editions of both 1899 and 1920 show this as a vacant plot of land. Only in the 1938 edition is the building shown. The cross on the cupola is evidence of its ecclesiastical origin, and I also think it is now in use as the church annexe of the adjacent Field Junior School. I can find no other possible references to a St James Church currently on the internet.
©Nigel Cox
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©Nigel Chadwick

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