History
Croxley Green has a large village green surrounded by some of its oldest buildings (17th century) including the Croxley Green Windmill. 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 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, the 1973 television documentary by John Betjeman, who referred to them solemnly as "a tradition dating back to 1952". The annual Mummer 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 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 workers at the end of the 19th Century. The mill closed in 1980. A windmill was built c1860. It survives today converted to residential accommodation.
Croxley Common Moor to the south of the village, OS grid reference TQ083949 was designated as an SSSI in 1986.
Read more about this topic: Croxley Green
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Spain is an overflow of sombreness ... a strong and threatening tide of history meets you at the frontier.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“America is, therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s history shall reveal itself. It is a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical lumber-room of Old Europe.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)