M25 Potters Bar


Post to the west Potters Bar
Post to the south Ganwick Corner
Post to the east Potters Bar Interchange


Barnet Road
2 Potty Pancakes. This was The Lion pub. This was built in 1785. It was originally a blacksmith’s shop, built in 1761 on ‘waste’. There is a large chimney stack at the left and a smaller one on the right. In 1837 the property was sold and divided into two - one a smithy and the other a wheelwright’s. By 1841 it was a beer shop and was called the Lion Brewery in 1861.
Particular Baptist Church. There are two buildings here. The older church, to the south, was designed by W. Allen Dixon in 1868. It replaced an earlier Baptist Church of 1789, before which the congregation had met in a field on the same site. It was registered for worship by the Particular Baptists and extended in 1884 with the construction of the Spurgeon Hall. It had a burial ground to the north which remains grassed over. It was damaged by Second World War bombing. It is now used as a church hall and a new church used, which was built in 1964.
Clayton Centre. This was originally the Toc H Hall.  Toc H was a national organisation set up during the Great War by Army Padre Tubby Clayton which continued after the war as a voluntary social service movement. In 1929 a Toc H group was formed in Potters Bar which by 1945 had Branch status which entitled it to its own lamp. They built a hall in Darkes Lane in 1937 on land donated by a Major King. In 1969 the site was acquired by Potters Bar district council who offered a plot in Barnet Road with money to build a new hall. In 1975 this was opened by Cecil Parkinson MP and used by various organisations.  By 2000   Toc H Central was in financial difficulties and needed to sell assets and the hall was sold. Members of the Branch negotiated with Hertsmere to lease the hall under a new management called The Clayton Centre and they have continued to use it under the traditions of Toc H.

Cherry Tree Lane
Footpath which crosses the railway,

Field View Road
Sunnybank Primary School. This closed in 2007

High Street
2-6 Canada Life Place. This large insurance company has a complex of buildings which appear to front mainly on Mutton Lane. The complex appears to date from the 1980s.
20a Solport (Potters Bar) Ltd. in 1955 this was a Surgical Glass works also supplying druggists sundries etc

Mutton Lane
Potters Bar and District Hospital. This replaced the Cottage Hospital in Richmond Road.   It opened in 1939 and was recognized and partly funded by Potters Bar Urban District Council. the building was approached by a wide driveway lined with flowering trees and a flowerbed donated by the Furzefield Women's Institute.  The Hospital was an H-shaped single-storey red brick building with 42 beds managed by the local GPs.  There was an operating theatre, three wards and Out-Patients. The land had been given by Mr. Tilbury, local baker, who had a ward named after him. In the Second World War it became part of the Emergency Medical Service, with 49 beds.  In 1948 the Hospital joined the NHS and later acquired a nurse’s home and a convalescent ward.  By 1964 it had a Casualty Department and an Out-Patients Department, but   in 1967, despite great public protest, the Casualty Department closed along with other changes.  In 1982 it was proposed to move more services to Barnet and close surgical units in small hospitals and an action committee was formed to no avail.   The Hospital became a geriatric hospital with 52 beds in 1985.  In 1990 it was reported that Tesco were interested in buying the site on return for a new hospital in Barnet Road.  This was agreed, and the site now contains a Tesco supermarket.
Tesco. On the site of the hospital.
Star House. Office block for British Gas Eastern Region and also Paper and Paper Products Industry Training Board. Demolished in 2000. It was built in land given in 1938 for a congregational church. The land was sold in 1963 and the church built elsewhere.
Fire and Ambulance Station. Potters Bar fire station opened in 1939 became part of Middlesex Fire Brigade in 1948. On reorganisation in 1965 it became part of Hertfordshire Fire and Ambulance Brigade
Limerick House. This was The Railroad inn (or the Beer Engine House) which lost its licence in 1906 and then became the local headquarters of the British Red Cross Society. It is now used by commercial offices.
St.Mary’s Churchyard. Burial Ground. The church is about half a mile from the churchyard which was t was closed for burials in the late 1970s. There are a number of Great War related graves including at one time the graves of the crew members of the German Schutte-Lanz Airship SL-11 brought down near Cuffley, and also the crew of a Zeppelin brought down at Potters Bar in 1916., all of whom were re-interred at Cannock Chase. These were all re-interred at Cannock Chase.
War Memorial. There is a memorial dedicated to those who died in Prisoner of War camps during the Second World War Two and were buried in cemeteries in Poland, Indonesia, Myanmar, Singapore, France and Thailand. The garden of remembrance was provided by the Potters Bar and Little Heath Urban Council Prisoner of War Fund.

Railway
Railway tunnel. This is on the former Great Northern Railway main line and built in 1849. It is 1214 yards duplicated in the late 1957-9s when the line was quadrupled by Halcrow contractors.
Aqueduct. The railway line is crossed by an aqueduct

Sources
Archaeology Data Service. Potters Bar
British History on Line South Mimms. Web site
British Listed Buildings. Web site
Clayton Centre. Web site
Hertfordshire Fire Stations. Web site
Hertsmere Council. Web site
Lost Hospitals of London. Web site
Potters Bar Baptist Church. Web site.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Bromley by Bow

South Norwood

River Lea/Bow Creek Canning Town