From our aerial photography over North Mymms series
This site has downloaded 50 aerial images taken over North Mymms in the 1920s, '40s and '50s. They are from the Britain From Above project and show how the area has changed over the years. This collection shows how Brookmans Park has grown in terms of housing and population since 1928-29.
Six galleries with 72 aerial images spanning 90 years
This photo-gallery is one of six in our series of aerial images over North Mymms. The collection includes a total of 66 photographs taken in 1928-29, 1947, 1948-54, the early 1960s, and 2002. The images show how North Mymms has developed over the course of almost 100 years. There are links to all six galleries at the bottom of this article.
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Countryside around Brookmans Avenue, Brookmans Park, 1928
Original Britain From Above caption |
Above: Brookmans Park station in the middle of the picture had opened two years earlier in 1926. Also visible are Brookmans Avenue, Bluebridge Road, Bradmore Way, Station Road, and Bradmore Lane. Oaklands Avenue, Westland Drive, and The Gardens have yet to be built. Moffats Lane is still a farm track. Brookmans Park was just starting to develop,
as a 1926 estate agent's sale brochure at the time indicated.
Above: In this view, the railway line is seen running across the picture with Hawkshead Lane and the railway bridge visible. Bluebridge Road leading to Hawkshead Road is left to right centre. Gobions Wood is the dark mass of trees in top middle of the picture. The houses south of Brookmans Park have yet to be built. We have more on the history of
Gobions Wood contained in the Heritage Report of 2002 which charts the history of land. There is also
a pamphlet about Gobions Estate, produced in 1993 by the former Gobions Woodland Trust.
Above: Brookmans Park in 1928 from the south-east. The picture shows Brookmans Park station, Bradmore Lane, Station Road, Bluebridge Road, Bradmore Way, and Brookmans Avenue. No development at that point of Oaklands Avenue, The Gardens, Westland Drive, or Peplins Way.
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Gobions Wood and surrounding countryside, Brookmans Park, 1928
Original Britain From Above caption |
Above: Hawkshead Lane, the bridge over the railway, and the junction with Bluebridge Road and Hawkshead Road. Gobions Wood is in the distance. No sign at this point of houses in The Gardens or the lower end of Bluebridge Road. There are signs of some housing on Mymms Drive.
Above: Mymms Drive, the Great North Road (then the A1), Shepherds Way (B157), and fields yet to be built on as Brookmans Park spreads east. No sign yet of Georges Wood Road, Calder Avenue, Pine Grove, Woodlands or Shrublands. The top of Brookmans Avenue can be seen top left with Brookmans stables, later the Golf Clubhouse, and Bell Bar in the distance. Chancellor’s School would not be built for another 36 years. Chancellor’s School would not be built for another 36 years. We have a feature on this site about
the development of Chancellor's School written to mark the 25th anniversary 1989. It includes embedded pages listing some of the early teaching staff, first pupils, lists of head girls and boys, chairs of governors, governors and chairs of the PTA.
Above: The Great North Road (then the A1) can be seen running across the bottom with Mymms Drive coming across from left centre to meet the top of Brookmans Avenue. George’s Wood in 1928, and the rolling fields that, two years later, would become Brookmans Park Golf Club. 36 years later Chancellor’s School would be built serving an expanding Brookmans Park population. The south of Welham Green can be seen at the top of the picture.
Above: Another view of George’s Wood, this time from further south showing the Great North Road (then the A1), Mymms Drive, Brookmans Avenue and the junctions with Shepherds Way and Kentish Lane. Swanley Bar Lane is at the bottom of the image. The Brookmans Park Transmitting Station would be completed one year later in 1929 (top right). We have two books on this site about the Transmitting Station. One is
A history of Brookmans Park Transmitting Station, and the other is a BBC publication entitled
The London Twin-Wave Broadcasting Station.
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Gobions Garden and Gobions Wood, Brookmans Park, from the south-east, 1928
Original Britain From Above caption |
Above: A view from the south showing Gobions Wood, Gobions Pond, and what is now Gobions Open Space. At the bottom is Folly Arch and the track that led up from Folly Arch at Little Heath through Gobions Wood to Brookmans Manor House. Also visible at the bottom is Swanley Bar Lane with some early housing. Mymms Drive, Moffats Lane, The Grove, and Georges Wood Road have yet to be developed.
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Gobions Garden and Gobions Wood, Brookmans Park, from the south-east, 1928
Original Britain From Above caption |
Above: Another view of Gobions Wood showing the Great North Road (then the A1) to the right, Mymms Drive, George’s Wood but no Georges Wood Road, and Bell Bar in the distance. Mymms Drive, Moffats Lane, The Grove, have yet to be developed. Top right shows the countryside heading over to Wildhill.
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Gobions Wood and Gobions Garden, Brookmans Park, from the south-east, 1928
Original Britain From Above caption |
Above: This view over Gobions Wood from the south-east shows how much the commuter village of Brookmans Park would develop from 1928 onwards. If you look to the middle of the left side of the picture you can make out Bluebridge Road weaving its way through what was then a small village centre around Bradmore Green. Hawkshead Road is running left to right centre with Boltons Farm in the foreground.
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The BBC Radio Transmitting Station, Brookmans Park, 1929.
This image has been produced from a print.
Original Britain From Above caption |
Above: The recently-constructed Brookmans Park Transmitting Station in 1929. This view is from the south west with the Great North Road (then the A1) just out of the picture at the bottom. Kentish Lane runs diagonally across the picture from three-quarters of the way up the right of the image over to the top left.
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The BBC Radio Transmitting Station, Brookmans Park, 1929.
This image has been produced from a print.
Original Britain From Above caption |
Above: The recently-constructed Brookmans Park Transmitting Station in 1929. This view is from the south west with the Great North Road (then the A1) hidden in the line of trees at the bottom of the picture. Kentish Lane runs diagonally across the top right of the picture.
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The BBC Radio Transmitting Station, Brookmans Park, 1929.
This image has been produced from a copy-negative.
Original Britain From Above caption |
Above: The recently-constructed Brookmans Park Transmitting Station in 1929. The site transmitted its first broadcast in October of that year. This view is from the west and the Great North Road (then the A1) can be seen entering the image from the bottom right. Grubbs Lane would be running left to right across the top.
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Brick Kiln Wood and surrounding countryside, Water End, 1928
Original Britain From Above caption |
Above: Brick Kiln Wood - the dark group of trees in the middle of the picture - as seen from the north-west over Water End. The curved road at the bottom would have been the old A5092 Barnet By-Pass, renumbered to A555 in 1935 and again to A1 in 1954, and renamed the unclassified Swanland Road when the A1(M) was constructed nearby in 1979. Bradmore Lane can be seen from middle right weaving up to top left where it meets Station Road.
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Countryside between Bush Wood and Peplin's Wood, Welham Green, 1928
Original Britain From Above caption |
Above: A picture taken from the west looking over the Barnet By-Pass and Bush Wood towards Welham Green to the left and Brookmans Park to the right. Dixons Hill Road is crossing the centre, travelling from its old junction with the Barnet By-Pass towards Welham Green, middle left. Bulls Lane can be seen left middle to top, weaving its way up to Bell Bar. Potterells Farm in Welham Green and Potterells House, further to the right are visible. We have a feature on the site about
the Potterells Estate. At the top of the photograph is Peplin’s Wood with the LNER railway line running along in front. Brookmans Park is visible top right.
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Brick Kiln Wood and surrounding countryside, Welham Green, from the south-west, 1928
Original Britain From Above caption |
Above: This shot taken from the south-west of Water End shows Warrengate Road and what is now Swanland Road at the bottom. Hawkshead Lane is bottom right winding its way up to the future site of the RVC. To the left is Abdale House and Water End. Brookmans Park is top right just past the railway line.
Above: Brick Kiln Wood - the dark group of trees to the right of the picture - as seen from the west over Water End.
Potterells can be seen a third of the way down on the left side. Warrengate Road and what is now Swanland road are at the bottom of the picture. Bradmore Lane is visible weaving its way through Brick Kiln Wood to Brookmans Park.
Our six collections of aerial images taken over North Mymms are:
You may have noticed that the Britain From Above project uses an apostrophe in George's Wood Road, as does Google Maps and the close-detail Ordnance Survey maps. The local road signs all read Georges Wood Road. So we have left the original captions as they were (in order to comply with the terms and conditions for using the images - see below), but we have used the locally-accepted version, Georges Wood Road, in all our descriptions.
All the images in this feature have been downloaded under the
terms and conditions set by
Britain From Above. These conditions are as follows:
"Permission is granted for limited distribution of specially prepared images. These are accessed by selecting the 'download' button under each image. These images are limited to 580px on the longest side and carry a special watermark. You may copy solely these watermarked images to a blog or personal web page as long as the page is freely available with no login restrictions and no charges. The following conditions apply: you must display the attribution which is contained in the watermark, you must not resize or crop the image, you may make no commercial use of the image or attempt to sell it, sub-license it or use it in any form of advertising. You must create a return link to the Britain from Above site."
The photographs are originally from the Aerofilms collection which includes 1.26 million negatives and more than 2000 photograph albums dating from 1919 to 2006. Aerofilms Ltd, was an air survey company set up in 1919. In 2007, the collection was bought by Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), English Heritage (EH), and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales (RCAHMW) from Blom ASA. Britain from Above was a four year project aimed at conserving 95,000 of the oldest and most valuable photographs in the Aerofilms collection, those dating from 1919 to 1953. Once conserved, the images were scanned into digital format and made available on the Britain From Above website for the public to see, download for non-commercial use, and buy higher resolution versions.
George’s wood road - why so called ?
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