The London Daily Newsletter Thursday 6 July

Bushey Heath
The origins of Bushey Heath can be traced back to the Napoleonic Wars.

The Napoleonic Wars was a period marked by severe food shortages. In an effort to address this problem, the government granted the wasteland east of Bushey to local landowners for agricultural purposes. This area, known as Bushey Common, was initially intended for food production. However, its proximity to a later railway and its elevated position, offering picturesque panoramic views, made it attractive to housing developers. Growth was rapid during the 19th and particularly the 20th centuries. The pace of expansion eventually slowed due to the establishment of the Metropolitan Green Belt after the Second World War, which imposed restrictions on new developments in and around Bushey. The implementation of the Metropolitan Green Belt legislation also played a role in the abandonment of the pre-war Edgware to Bushey Heath extension, part of the Northern Heights programme for the Northern Line underground railway. The stringent regulations of the Green Belt greatly limited new development opportunities, and the original plan to stimulate housing growth along the new railway route became unviable without the anticipated residential development. As construction work had already progressed at the outbreak of the war, the partially completed depot was repurposed for bomber manufacturing. Following the war and the enforcement of the Green Belt, the depot was converted into the Aldenham bus depot (famous for its appearance in Cliff Richard’s film “Summer Holiday”) and remained operational until 1985. Bushey Heath station would have been situated at the intersection of Elstree Road and Northwestern Avenue.

TUM Book Club: Old Covent Garden
The magic of the old Covent Garden Market is evoked through Clive Boursnell’s photographs, taken over the course of numerous visits to Covent Garden in the 1960s and 1970s.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Clive Boursnell, then a young photographer, shot thousands of photographs of the old Covent Garden, documenting the end of an era before the markets moved out of central London. Boursnell captured these last days of the market over a period of six years, from 1968 until the market’s closure, in a series of beautiful portraits of the feisty life of a city institution.

Entrance to the Fleet River, c. 1750

Samuel Scott

Video: Oyster
Getting around London with Oyster