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Last day of the season, Watford were already relegated - Coventry hadn't won away in the league all season. Result 1-0 home win.
©Paul Ashwin
Dist:0.2km<br/>A typical West Watford street scene, this one being taken looking south-westwards down Holywell Road from its junction with Harwoods Road, and showing the Victorian housing and the Council's parking and traffic management measures.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.3km<br/>Back in the days when Watford Football Club were playing in front of large crowds, this halt on the Croxley Green branch line was built to provide access to the Vicarage Road Stadium for away fans. Closed along with the rest of the branch in 1996 the rails remain in place, mothballed presumably in case the long planned Croxley rail link from the Metropolitan Line to the centre of Watford ever gets built. At the time of the submission of the photograph in January 2006, Streetmap http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?x=510190&y=195440&z=1&sv=510190,195440&st=4&ar=Y&mapp=newmap.srf&searchp=newsearch.srf&ax=510190&ay=195440 were helpfully still telling us that the halt was open on match days only...
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.3km<br/>The buddleia grows ever denser on the trackbed of this disused railway line, abandoned to nature 12 years before this photograph was taken. The railway originally formed part of the Watford to Rickmansworth line, opened in 1862, and shortly afterwards taken over by the London & North Western Railway (LNWR). In 1912 the LNWR opened a further branch line to Croxley Green, diverting from the original Rickmansworth branch about 100 metres into what is now the jungle. In 1952 the original Rickmansworth branch was closed, but the Croxley Green branch survived until 1996. The Croxley Green branch was powered by an electrified third rail, seen on the right side of the running rails in this photograph. This electrification method was, and is, used throughout the suburban network of the former Southern Railway, but its use was very unusual this far north.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.3km<br/>Ebury Way follows the trackbed of the long dismantled railway line from Watford to Rickmansworth. Opened in 1862, it was shortly afterwards taken over by the London & North Western Railway, but was an early victim of the post-war Nationalization of the railways, closing to passenger traffic in 1952. It now forms sections of both National Cycle Network Routes 6 (London to Keswick) and 61 (Rickmansworth to Ware).
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.4km<br/>Occupation Road runs down the east side of Watford FC's Vicarage Road ground and this is the rather unassuming "Players' and Match Officials' Entrance". The structure to the left is the east stand and this is the oldest at the ground, that the club have occupied since 1922. Up the hill are further turnstiles to the ground and just visible at the top of the hill is the doorway entrance to [[1322048]]
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.4km<br/>Please see [[1322048]] for a square-on view of The Red Lion and some history of this now-closed pub, the stable block of which can be seen beyond it. The large building on the left is the back of the Vicarage Road stand of Watford Football Club.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.4km<br/>The Red Lion is in Vicarage Road and opposite Watford Football Club's stadium. As such it was the home supporters' pub for many years. In fact the Red Lion easily predates the football ground, and the Ordnance Survey map of 1871 shows it, the Union Workhouse and the Cemetery as the main, and indeed virtually the only, features in the hamlet of Colney Butts. The present building dates from 1895 and was designed by the architect C P Ayres. It is locally listed. The text across the front reads:- THE RED LION BENSKINS CELEBRATED WATFORD ALE & STOUT The pub was bought by Watford Football Club in 2006 with various intentions of turning it into a club shop, offices and houses, but plans for these were withdrawn late in 2008. In February 2009 Saracens Rugby Club, who share the Vicarage Road stadium with the football club, expressed an interest in taking it over. Currently it stands empty and boarded-up.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.4km<br/>These terraced houses almost certainly date from around the Edwardian period as they are not shown on the Ordnance Survey's map of 1899 but are shown on the 1920 edition. This area of Watford is known as Colney Butts. To pinpoint the time that this photograph was taken it coincided precisely with the roar that went up from nearby [[3990]] when John Eustace scored a 59th minute equalizer for Watford against Ipswich Town. Watford went on to win 2-1.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.4km<br/>This is the entrance to Riverside Park, the bridge taking one over the River Colne. There is a skateboard facility and a playground in the park, which has been created from reclaimed land.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.6km<br/>The Cemetery was opened in 1858 and covers about 5.6 hectares or about 14 acres of land. It is now full for ordinary burials. Although it is now surrounded on three sides by Victorian housing, when it was opened it was in open countryside, away from the centre of Watford in the hamlet of Colney Butts. The original site was rectangular but was extended to the west in late Victorian times before the houses in West Watford were built. This chapel was built as the Episcopal Chapel, there being a separate chapel for Dissenters to the north.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.6km<br/>Thirteen years after its closure in 1996 and the trackwork of the Croxley Green branch line from Watford High Street station is still in situ, just visible in the snow bottom right in this view taken from the Wiggenhall Road bridge. There has been a railway here since 1862 when the branch line from Watford Junction to Rickmansworth was built. Around fifty years later the London & North Western Railway built a branch line off the Rickmansworth line to Croxley Green. Forty years after that, in 1952, the Rickmansworth branch was closed to passenger traffic, and in 1967 freight services ceased too, and the track was cut back to the junction with the Croxley Green branch.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.6km<br/>The Oddfellows is just around the corner from Vicarage Road Stadium so is a popular location on matchdays. In the fairly recent past it used to be called "Mac's Bar". Looking at the old Victorian Ordnance Survey map of the area dated 1871-1882 it is evident that these houses and the pub, on the west side of Fearnley Street, were the first to be built in the area and formed an enclave, along with the cemetery to the rear of them, separate from the rest of Watford, and called Colney Butts.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.6km<br/>Collins English Dictionary defines a precinct as an enclosed area or building marked by a fixed boundary such as a wall. Vicarage Road Precinct does not seem to quite fulfil that definition. It is however a long-established pedestrianized section of Vicarage Road, with retail units on either side beneath flats. The buff stone tablet in the brickwork to the right is dated 1881.
©Nigel Cox
Dist:0.7km<br/>Ebury Way is a cycle track on a dismantled railway. This view is looking North from a bridge over the river.
©David Hawgood

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