EPW059363 ENGLAND (1938). Larbourne Farm and environs, Thorney, 1938

Thank you Katy for the clue that I should be looking alongside the River Colne. Even then I had assumed that the stream in shot was the main river and therefore I was looking further north around Croxley Green to start. This came to nothing when I tried to reconcile a sort of railway junction in a wood with the centre of Watford. Another false trail was trying to fit the railway in the foreground as the Metropolitan Railway line to Uxbridge with the rail junction at Ruislip. Ruislip Lido was a tentative fit for the pond at the top of the picture. The railways were on about the right alignment but there was no wood at the railway junction which meant I had to search again.

The idyllic rural scene which we see is such a contrast to today where most of the area has been covered with concrete to create one of the busiest motorway junctions in Britain.

As has been widely quoted 'the past is a foreign country'.

Well done for spending all that time on it! Thank you. We'll update the catalogue and post your new data here in due course.



Yours, Katy

Britain from Above Cataloguing Team Leader

Another red herring!