The history of South Oxhey will be brought to life in a new stage production.

Nowhere Near London is a play which explores the drama of life on the estate in the late 1940s.

The action is confined to one house and focuses on four men and a young woman to came to South Oxhey.

The playwright, Professor John Schad, said the main characters are “unsure if life on the estate is heaven or hell”.

More than 15,000 Londoners moved to Hertfordshire amid a housing crisis after World War Two.

He said: “The estate was a red-hot news story at the time.

“Many were very wary of this mass ‘invasion’ of working-class Londoners, housed all together on the edge of Watford.

“Were they just a huge financial burden on local rate-payers? Would they ruin the woodland in which the estate was built? Were they, even, a political threat - one vast Communist cell?”

The professor of Modern Literature at Lancaster University spent several days in Watford Central Library looking through microfiche copy of Watford Observer press coverage of the estate to recreate an accurate historical picture of the time.

A one-off showing of the play will be held in the main auditorium at the Watford Palace Theatre on Monday, July 4.

Five members of Collect-ifs Theatre Collective will play the characters in the play.

This scheme is funded by a Lancaster University Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Exchange Fellowship.

And after the play, audience members will have the chance to share their memories of living on the estate during the time period.

Nowhere Near London is an adaptation of Professor Schad’s novel, the Late Walter Benjamin.

Professor John Schad was a former resident of South Oxhey and went to Watford Grammar School for boys.