MRS NORMA WILLIS, of Trefusis Walk, Watford, recalls:

MY husband was the acting secretary of Cassiobury Estate so he bought a bit of land. We used to live at the bottom of Langley Way. He bought it because it had a wonderful Cedar tree like the Cedars in the park.

When we came to build or plan the Cedar tree wasn't there. The wings of spitfires were made of Cedars and the government didn't ask, they just took. In its place was a gun-emplacement. And there's a tumulus an ancient burial mound in my garden. The London Archaeological Society used to come and look at it.

On the top of the tumulus was an aircraft gun. They cut down an enormous ash tree to be able to shoot over the southern horizon.

The gun emplacement was sheltered by the trees as a kind of camouflage. It had the whole of the open sky as far as Harrow.

The American camp was barb-wired off from the rest of Cassiobury. The end was at Trefusis Walk. Down the centre of the American camp used to be a pathway and that became Trefusis Walk. If you can imagine either side of Trefusis Walk huts with a paving path leading down to it. The dining room was at the end.

There was an artist there but I wasn't allowed to see his murals because young ladies were sheltered in those days.

Then what happened was that squatters came and stayed in the camp and they caused quite a problems in the council because they wanted the land for building. Of course, when we came to make our garden we used the paving stones that were there already.

The first houses to be built were at the Langley Way end. Mine was the first house that was built. I have been here 50-odd years. We came two years after the war ended. We were actually the second house to have a building licence. The first house was the corner house between Hempstead Road and Langley Way that was Tom Simpson's, he was a councillor. It no longer is the corner house another house was built there.

I was a teacher at Leggatts Way. Bombs dropped on my classroom and I had to teach in the corridor.

July 1, 2002 15:00