Bushey, United Kingdom

The 19th and 20th centuries marked the time of most change in Bushey, especially between 1860 and 1960. The population rose 28-fold within 200 years, from 856 in 1801, to just under 24,000 today. The expansion was for many reasons, one of the main ones being due to the boom in industry caused by the railway in the early 20th century. A result was that many new jobs were created in and around Watford, and in the early 1920s, Bushey's first council houses were built. More housing was later built for the service families working in defence organisations in Stanmore and Northwood. The expansion eventually died down because much of the land in and around Bushey was protected under the Metropolitan Green Belt after the Second World War.

This same Green Belt legislation was also partly responsible for the abandonment of the pre-war Edgware to Bushey Heath extension as part of the Northern Heights programme of the Northern line underground railway. The Metropolitan Green Belt put great restrictions on new development, and the plan had been to use the new railway to stimulate new housing around the new route; without the new housing the route was deemed no longer viable. However, as work was advanced at the onset of war, the depot was completed for use as bomber manufacture, and following the Second World War and Green Belt coming into force, it was converted into the Aldenham bus depot (of Cliff Richard's Summer Holiday fame), which it remained until 1985, when it became derelict. It was redeveloped in 1996 and is now the Centennial Park Industrial Estate (51.639954°N 0.308561°W / 51.639954; -0.308561). Bushey Heath station would have been located at the intersection of Elstree Road and Northwestern Avenue (51.64245°N 0.3200°W / 51.64245; -0.3200). Conceptual plans existed in the 1903 Act of Parliament for an Edgware to Watford railway that would have seen the railway extended at a later date though Bushey village and on to Watford market, but even less came of that than the partially completed Edgware to Bushey Heath stretch. In the 1830s, the London and Birmingham Railway cut through the area between London and Watford though it did not initially serve Bushey. The railway passes to the north west of the town and crosses Bushey Arches Viaduct, an original feature dating from 1837.

The highest point in the historic county of Middlesex was in Bushey Heath on the border between Hertfordshire and Middlesex at the junction of the A4140 and the A409. At 153 m (502 ft) above sea level, the grid reference was TQ 152937.

The lack of farming in Bushey Heath meant that it was a heavily wooded area up to the 18th century; this, added to the lack of street lighting and police, meant that Bushey Heath's history is full of tales of thieves, highwaymen and even murder. According to Grant Longman's Robberies on Bushey Heath, the road from Bushey Heath to Stanmore is said to be where the highwaymen lurked, ready to raid the dozen or so caravans that passed through Bushey Heath daily, carrying money from trade in London. Before venturing through the pass, parties of travellers and merchants would form at the Boot Inn at Edgware and the Three Crowns at Bushey Heath so they did not have to venture through the pass alone. Although one of the highwaymen responsible for the attacks is rumoured to have been the notorious Dick Turpin, evidence suggests that he was in fact more active in the region of Essex.