Another good week

There is possibly something about the immediate post-Christmas period which encourages us to catch up with contacting friends, tidying up and sorting out, or trying in vain to make a dent in the general "to do" list.  As a result I have been able to record some wonderful progress.

First of all Ian posted me a copy of a photograph I didn't expect existed.  Almost all of the shops which have been historically photographed were in prominent locations, and that includes the 1964 survey of shops in St Albans, the collection of which is in the care of the Museum of St Albans.  But there were a small number of shops off the beaten track, and one of them was on the corner of Harlesden Road and Burnham Road.  I can hear people now saying to themselves, "Oh yes, Branson's."  Branson's had been built as a shop in 1903; the usual corner shop which could be described as a grocery with sweets.  I am sure someone will email in to tell me when it served its final customer, for that is a date I do not have.  But I do know that Mr and Mrs Field in the 1960 period had an alsatian dog.  I delivered the London Evening News to the shop on behalf of my employer, P H Stone, and the delivery was made, double folded, to the dog's mouth, and it would quietly walk through to the room at the back of the shop.  Anyway, enjoy the picture, which I imagine to have been taken in the 1950s, but if not, I am sure someone will correct me.

I have now received my second recollection about wartime street shelters and am therefore increasingly certain that the council constructed more of them in the actual road space than I had previously realised.  I knew about one at the end of Upper Heath Road, and I received a letter in which a shelter was said to have been built in front of their house in Oakwood Drive, near to the Elm Drive junction.  Now I have received a message from Stewart, who lives in Malaysia, recalling an unknown number in Royal Road, again, built on the road surface.  This would make sense as there had been a row between the parents and the county authority about the safety of children during raids.  The existing shelter under the nursery would only have been sufficient for a small number of the school's children.  The authority would therefore have needed more than one additional shelter.  Neither person recalled exactly how many shelters there were but the suggestion is between 4 and 6.  The photograph (above right) was not taken in St Albans, but gives an idea of what the street scene might have looked like with street shelters constructed there.

Finally, Stewart (see above) emailed me about a warden's post in the grounds of Beaumont School, at the end of its drive.  I wasn't quite sure what kind of structure it would have been, but was told there was space inside for two bunk beds.  There was one photo in my collection, taken by former teacher, Alf Childs, at Beaumont Boys' School in 1959 which might have shown something.  And there it was, that brick building in the background, immediately behind that gaggle of parents and pupils – we were just about to leave on a school journey, and that is me on the extreme left.  So that is what a wardens' post looked like!  From Google Earth it looks as if it has been demolished, which is not surprising given the number of new buildings the school has added to what we knew as the back field.


That was a good week.