Croxley Green
Encyclopedia
Croxley Green is a small town and civil parish of approximately 5,000 dwellings and 12,000 residents located between Watford
Watford
Watford is a town and borough in Hertfordshire, England, situated northwest of central London and within the bounds of the M25 motorway. The borough is separated from Greater London to the south by the urbanised parish of Watford Rural in the Three Rivers District.Watford was created as an urban...

 (to the north-east) and Rickmansworth
Rickmansworth
Rickmansworth is a town in the Three Rivers district of Hertfordshire, England, 4¼ miles west of Watford.The town has a population of around 15,000 people and lies on the Grand Union Canal and the River Colne, at the northern end of the Colne Valley regional park.Rickmansworth is a small town in...

 (to the south-west) in Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. Croxley is about 20 miles north-west of London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

.

History

Croxley Green has a large village green surrounded by some of its oldest buildings (17th century) including the Croxley Green Windmill
Croxley Green Windmill
Croxley Green Windmill is a Grade II listed tower mill at Croxley Green, Hertfordshire, England which has been converted to residential accommodation.-History:...

.
There is extensive building from the 19th Century centred around New Road plus a good deal of housing stock from the 1930s, built at the time of the Metropolitan Line branch. The Green houses the "Revels on The Green", an annual village fair which includes a traditional maypole
Maypole
A maypole is a tall wooden pole erected as a part of various European folk festivals, particularly on May Day, or Pentecost although in some countries it is instead erected at Midsummer...

 dance, which used to be illustrated on the road signs on entering the village.

In 2008 a group of residents were successful in gaining "village green" status also for a small area of woodland ("Buddleia Wood") to the south of the village, thereby protecting the area for generations to come.

The village signs were replaced in February 2008 with a scene of All Saints Church and The Green. The revels were featured in Metro-land
Metro-land (TV)
Metro-land is a BBC documentary film written and narrated by the then Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman. It was directed by Edward Mirzoeff and first broadcast in colour on February 26, 1973...

, the 1973 television documentary by John Betjeman
John Betjeman
Sir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack".He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...

, who referred to them solemnly as "a tradition dating back to 1952". The annual Mummer
MUMmer
MUMmer is a bioinformatics software system for sequence alignment. It is based on the suffix tree data structure and is one of the fastest and most efficient systems available for this task, enabling it to be applied to very long sequences. It has been widely used for comparing different genomes...

 folk play "St. George & The Dragon" is played out during the Christmas period at a number of village hostelries. Since 2006 the Parish Council have organised a firework display on The Green for New Year's Eve.

Croxley Mill was built in 1830 adjacent to the Grand Union Canal
Grand Union Canal
The Grand Union Canal in England is part of the British canal system. Its main line connects London and Birmingham, stretching for 137 miles with 166 locks...

 by the paper manufacturer John Dickinson. Croxley Script stationery used to be produced there by John Dickinson and Co. Ltd. but is now a trade mark registered to Sappi (U.K.) Limited. Streets in Croxley (Dickinson Square, Dickinson Avenue, Barton Way and others) are named after Mill owners and management and some contain housing built by the company for mill
Paper mill
A paper mill is a factory devoted to making paper from vegetable fibres such as wood pulp, old rags and other ingredients using a Fourdrinier machine or other type of paper machine.- History :...

 workers at the end of the 19th Century. The mill closed in 1980. A windmill
Croxley Green Windmill
Croxley Green Windmill is a Grade II listed tower mill at Croxley Green, Hertfordshire, England which has been converted to residential accommodation.-History:...

 was built c1860. It survives today converted to residential accommodation.

Croxley Common Moor to the south of the village, OS grid reference was designated as an SSSI in 1986.

Transport

Train services are currently provided by the Watford branch of the London Underground
London Underground
The London Underground is a rapid transit system serving a large part of Greater London and some parts of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Essex in England...

 Metropolitan Line
Metropolitan Line
The Metropolitan line is part of the London Underground. It is coloured in Transport for London's Corporate Magenta on the Tube map and in other branding. It was the first underground railway in the world, opening as the Metropolitan Railway on 10 January 1863...

 from Croxley station
Croxley tube station
Croxley Station is a London Underground station at Croxley Green in the Three Rivers district of Hertfordshire. It is on the Watford branch of the Metropolitan Line...

. The journey takes around 40 minutes to Baker Street or 60 minutes to Aldgate in the City of London
City of London
The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...

. The village is further away from the now-closed Croxley Green railway station
Croxley Green railway station
Croxley Green is a disused railway station near Watford, outside London, UK. It is located between Watford and the village of Croxley Green to the west of Watford, at the end of a short branch line.-History:...

 on the Croxley Green to Watford
Watford and Rickmansworth Railway
The Watford and Rickmansworth Railway Company was a short-lived company that ran services between Watford and Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire, England...

 line. Proposals have been put forward for the line to be re-opened as part of the Metropolitan Line, but as yet the Croxley Rail Link
Croxley Rail Link
The Croxley Rail Link is a railway engineering proposal to re-route part of a London Underground line in Hertfordshire, outside London, UK. The project would divert Metropolitan line Watford branch services after station away from station to via intermediate stations using a reopened section of...

 has not been funded.

Church of England


Independent Evangelical


Local organisations

Croxley Green has an active Residents Association and Parish Council and is also the home of an array of local organisations dedicated to pastimes and leisure. The Croxley Green Society run the "Revels" and there are varying clubs including the Camera, Needlecrafters, Wine, Vineyard, Bicycle, Jazz, and Folk to mention the first few.

Famous residents

John Theodore Tussaud (1858–1943) the great-grandson of Madame Tussaud
Marie Tussaud
Anna Maria Tussaud was an artist known for her wax sculptures and Madame Tussaud's, the wax museum she founded in London.- Biography :...

 lived at The Hawthorns, 17 New Road, in the early years of the 20th century (c1902-1914). Barbara Woodhouse
Barbara Woodhouse
Barbara Kathleen Vera Woodhouse , was a well known British dog trainer, author and television personality. Her 1980 television series Training Dogs the Woodhouse Way made her into a household name in the UK...

 the dog trainer presented Training Dogs the Woodhouse Way on television in the 1980s and lived at Campions from the 1940s to the 1980s. It is also the home to the 1980 BBC Mastermind
Mastermind (TV series)
Mastermind is a British quiz show, well known for its challenging questions, intimidating setting and air of seriousness.Devised by Bill Wright, the basic format of Mastermind has never changed — four and in later contests five contestants face two rounds, one on a specialised subject of the...

 winner (and sometime London black cab driver) Fred Housego
Fred Housego
Fred Housego is a former London taxi driver who became a television and radio personality and presenter after winning the BBC quiz Mastermind in 1980. His specialist subject in the final was 'The Tower of London'...

. Before his death in 1997 Ron Tarr
Ron Tarr
Ronald "Ron" Tarr was a British actor who played minor roles in television series and films. He died of cancer in 1997....

 used to live on Durrants Drive - he was a British actor best known for playing the part of "Big Ron" in Eastenders
EastEnders
EastEnders is a British television soap opera, first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 19 February 1985 and continuing to today. EastEnders storylines examine the domestic and professional lives of the people who live and work in the fictional London Borough of Walford in the East End...

.

External links

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