Sunbury Road Box

[petewilson]

The Brown Bear at the junction of Bear Road and Sunbury Way (1968)

Ahhhhh at last a nice little find........Another "T" box funnily enough......
Let's go back to 1968 and this is situated between 2 Public Houses (which no longer exist)
The Brown Bear at the junction of Bear Road and Sunbury Way (The other pub was called The Oxford Arms)
Now I can't find any box "close" on the list, the closest being T25 a mile or so away.......

Pete

[petewilson]

Ahhhh so it is T25.......
How's about another photo of same box

Pete

[hb88banzai]

Wow, wonderful finds Pete! A couple of very nice photos to a Box I wasn't sure we'd ever get any of at all.  

It is absolutely T25!

I'm not at all surprised at your confusion as it took me a bit of searching to reconcile the changes to the area and the Met List description using old non-OS Maps back when I was finalizing T Division a couple months ago. Google Maps always directed one to a different location (as you said, about a mile away to a Park Road that didn't come anywhere near a Sunbury anything), but through some searching this exact intersection was found and recently the OS Maps confirmed it.

Bear Road hasn't changed, but both Park and Sunbury were renamed some time in the 40s or 50s, and of course the whole intersection was all but destroyed when they put in the new raised highway along the old Sunbury Road/Sunbury Way (now named Country Way on this stretch of the A316).

It doesn't help that the description in the Met List and the names used on these roads only matched for at most a couple decades in the middle of this Box's existence. The Met List gives the location of the Box as "Sunbury Road, north side 15 yards east of Park Road - Hanworth". Before the War the stretch of road this Box was on was indeed named Sunbury Road, but the referenced cross street went by the name School Road when the Box was first Sited. Some time during or just after the War the cross street's name was changed to Park Road, and some time after that (circa 1960) the main road's name was changed to Sunbury Way. Another issue is that (as the photo and the OS Maps show) the Box was actually WEST of Park Road, not east. A more quibbling bit is that it also wasn't 15 yards, but rather some 26 yards from Park Road by my measurements.

Here's an extract of the 1962 OS Map, which is the only one that has the Box (forgive the low resolution, but it's all I have access to) - Box Site is near center frame --



The "PCB" is blurry but still marginally legible between the two linear stands of trees planted in the sidewalk, and the square dot that denotes the Box itself is just below the "P", just to the right of the group of four trees. That triangular center island at the intersection, visible on the map and in the photos, had a War Memorial in the centre, which you can just catch part of on the far right edge of the first photo.

Here are a couple of blowups of the Box --





Due to the extensive newer road construction, the sidewalk the Box was on is now in the middle of the Hounslow Road off ramp from Country Way --



The red pointer marks the spot, noting that this is more or less a reverse shot of the original photos, looking back towards the old intersection with Park Road, Bear Road, Hounslow Road and Twickenham Road.

Box Site URL:   http://maps.google.com/maps?q=51.433328,+-0.393188&hl=en&ll=51.433294,-0.393373&spn=0.000007,0.004833&sll=51.433328,-0.393255&sspn=0.000559,0.001208&t=m&z=18&layer=c&cbll=51.433328,-0.393255&panoid=ujWdhSZCi4VcimOf_JpymQ&cbp=12,90.65,,0,24.18

Again, great find!

[petewilson]

Right to complicate things even further........
Here is another Photo of the same box from a different angle and it is opposite Hanworth War Memorial and this is why I thought it couldn't be T25
This is what I found on Google Street
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Hanworth+War+Memorial&hl=en&ll=51.429611,-0.390701&spn=0.000856,0.65918&sll=51.430253,-0.389371&sspn=0.004187,0.0103&hq=War+Memorial&hnear=The+Hanworth+Centre,+64+Hounslow+Rd,+Feltham+TW13+6QQ,+United+Kingdom&t=m&z=11&layer=c&cbll=51.429842,-0.390515&panoid=lUX1cTYKzfIGxGaDoV3zSQ&cbp=12,67.35,,0,-4.05

[hb88banzai]

Ah, another great picture!

A blowup --



Nice details. Shame we don't have a pic with fewer compression artifacts, though. So, it wasn't a paved sidewalk, but rather a grassy or gravely verge/sidewalk. Good view of the other P.H. (The Oxford Arms) behind the Box as well.

As to the complications - well, considering it was a War Memorial, obviously they had to find a new home for it when they destroyed the old intersection.

Your current street view of the War Memorial --



If you look closely at the newest 1968 pic vs. the current memorial street view though, they are quite different even without resorting to maps. Even the curve in the road is reversed and that house would have been in the old photo. Guess I'm getting too much experience reading these pics  

Here's what the intersection where the War Memorial is currently at looked like back on the same 1962 OS Map --



Similar layout to the Box's corner, but really quite different in the details. I can see why they picked it as the new site for the War Memorial though - same basic shape and size of triangular island already there waiting for it and only about a quarter mile south, at the other end of Bear Road.

[petewilson]

As usual Banzai you are absolutely right! 
Quote from Wikipedia;-

"The construction of the M3 feeder road (now part of the A316) in the 1970s cut Hanworth in two; in preparation for this, the library was relocated to Mount Corner, opposite the Hanworth Park House icehouse mound. Forge Lane Infants and Junior School was built on the south side of the new road, and the war memorial was relocated."