Decade News

The recent news from the District Council announcing its new and welcome policy on trees, as well as the County Council's proposals for use of some of its land for solar energy, is a positive start to a new decade.  Looking back to the first month of earlier decades provides a mix of decisions, events and observations which are shared here.

Stanhope Road homes built of land sold by Thomas Kinder

1880: Thomas Kinder, owner of Beaumonts Farm relinquished two fields he had previously grown malting barley in – for his brewery business – and this provided the development opportunity we know as Stanhope and Granville roads.  And what became a huge event that summer, the murder of Marshalswick farmer Edward Anstee.

1890: The district was in a bind regarding the treatment of patients with contagious diseases, especially since the pest house at Smallford had been closed.  The city council proposed to build a new isolation hospital on part of the Hatfield Road cemetery, itself only opened six years earlier.

1900: At the beginning of the year the Bath & West Agricultural Society announced it would organise an agricultural show that summer at Cunningham Hill Farm.  Animals and equipment was brought by rail to London Road Station and taken to the site via a drive, now Cunningham Hill Road.

St Paul's Mission Church, Stanhope Road

1910: It was announced that St Paul's Parish Church would be consecrated at a special service that Easter.  The church had been launched in a tin building in Stanhope Road and building work on the permanent building begun in 1908.

1920: Work began on a cenotaph memorial at the intersection of main paths at Hatfield Road Cemetery, and was completed in time for its dedication that November and before the memorial in St Peter's Street.

War Memorial at Hatfield Road Cemetery

1930: A partnership of builders, Walter Goodwin and Charles Hart completed purchase of a small field and began the task of building homes along three short roads, Lynton, Windermere and Glenlyn avenues.

1940: The beginning of the year proved to be bitterly cold; fuel was in short supply; most schools were working part time to provide accommodation for evacuated schools, and some schools remained unheated.

1950: A major main drainage project began to enable both old and new Marshalswick estates to be connected to the city's sewer network and its treatment works.  It was still a time when such work lagged behind house building.

1960: Residents living in St Albans' East End districts who commuted to London, finally saw the launch of new diesel trains and said goodbye to the steam locomotives calling at the City Station.

1970: A field with access from Barley Mow Lane was considered for a suitable location for gypsies, although the field was thought to be too large.

1980: St Albans Co-operative Society submitted yet more plans to a concerned council for its proposed supermarket on the site of the former Ballito hosiery mill.  The concern was not its size, but elements of its design and brickwork.