Let's Go To the Park

 Children and families have always much enjoyed making creative use of their local park, whether recreation ground or town park, ever since such places first became available; in the case of Clarence Park since the 1850s when the field next to the Hatfield road was known as the fete field.  In residential areas that might have been when residential  estates were first developed, or when the local council first acquired such facilities, often through the beneficence of wealthy individuals or families. And in general these spaces were for the free use of the public.

View across the recreation park at Clarence Park from Clarence Road.

On the whole the unwritten codes governing such open spaces have been adhered to with little irritation.  When Clarence Park was the sole public open space yes, there were a few conflicts.  Organisers of sports events sometimes found it difficult to cover their costs without charging for admittance.  But, hey, rules are rules, yes? Originally, the football club closed part or all of the park to all from one hour before to one hour after a match; this would have been the gate money, but the club and the council faced a backlash from those who were locked out of enjoying their new park's facilities at times of their choosing.  Even residents living a stones throw from the park gates were threatened with exclusion because they paid their local rates to the rural council rather than the city; a dubious practice fortunately short-lived.

The council's approach since the 1950s has generally been to give precedence to major public entertainment events to Verulamium Park and to relocate successful and growing participatory sports to other venues – the aspirations of a future football club have not yet  been satisfied.  And car parking is not the only consideration.

Promotional view of an Overplay site.
COURTESY OVERPLAY

This background is currently in the minds of many groups and a business known as Overplay has submitted an application for a pseudo "big top" to pitch up in the recreation ground of Clarence Park for a month to (partly) include the schools' Easter holiday, this lasting barely two weeks.  While the active entertainment is undoubtedly both active and entertaining there are a number of conflicts.  The area being booked (but not yet agreed) seems extensive and essentially that part of the park would be privatised for a full month, with access limited to payees. Fully half of the period is covered by the school holiday and weekends, all of which would be charged at £17 per person per session, but their marketing does not specify the length of a session. Is is one hour, two hours? Access to the enclosure and its equipment will be off-limits to children under 100 cm in height.  So parents with children in both height groups will find their time and resources divided.  We wonder whether adult groups are also admitted, and if so,  whether there will be mixed age groups, bearing in mind the operating hours would be between 9am and 6pm.

Promotional activities at a typical Overplay site.
There is not a great deal of detail on the operator's website.
COURTESY OVERPLAY

Certainly, the facility promises to be successful for those families able to afford it; they may even get access to toilets other park users are denied, another facility this blog featured recently.  Added to the potential cost for users promoters are intending to bring their own catering facilities, but users would be banned from bringing into the enclosure food not purchased by the promotor, a nearby shop or at Verdi's for example.  Now, we know that catering, like toilets, is not widely available.  But when we were children we took sandwiches prepared at home, squash diluted in an old bottle, reserving a small amount of cash for an ice cream.

View of the permanent playpark in Clarence Park when first opened by the council in 1921.

The recreation ground certainly proves to be busy when the weather is kind – crowded even.  Families and groups generally enjoying themselves, staying for as long as they wish, and in the spirit of local parks, free at the point of use.  Informal games of catch, softball cricket, French cricket and so on are all part of the family mix.

But there might be an alternative golden opportunity for the promoter as well as the council.  Owners of training grounds and farmers on the edge of the city with a lay field which is resting, and all in the spirit of a former popular entertainment: the circus.  After all, the promotor's indoor facilities are shown as a circus-style big top.  Of course, there is the field often used for outdoor entertainment and pitched big-tops at Westminster Lodge adjacent to the formerly named Muddy Lane  opposite the swimming pool, where there is also generous car-parking provision – one of the facilities which Clarence Park does not have. Of course there would always be Verulamium Park itself.

We hope everyone enjoys something of the facilities provided during the improving weather months, and we trust the pleasure is  "affordable".

Note: at the time of writing the application for this booking has not been confirmed.

Note: The organisation Protect Clarence Park is making a formal objection to placing Overplay in the Recreation Ground section of Clarence Park, and has communicated as such to its members.

Street Plates 2

 Here we are with the second in a collection of indeterminate length, in which we informally let passers by know how many of the roads around our neighbourhoods have specific reasons for their names – rather than random titles from the offices of the council or a private developer.  In case you are late in discovering this series, the street plates shown are for illustrative purposes only and are not part of an actual proposal for the District Council!  Just a different method of highlighting additional information which we might be interested in discovering.

There is no surprise for older readers about the name Hobbs, for Alfred Hobbs launched a motor engineering business in Hatfield Road having taken over from an earlier owner of a similar trade, C M Carter on the same site.  Today Kwik-Fit plys its trade.  Mr Hobbs also joined a partnership to develop an agricultural engineering business known as Tractor Shafts on a site adjacent to Lyon Way at Butterwick.  The company later had another name: Smallford Planters. 

Mr Hobbs created his home along Colney Heath Lane, naturally enough because that is where you will come across Hobbs Close today.  When the Colney Heath site was sold and permission given for housing development it was an easy decision to name the access road from Colney Heath Lane Hobbs Close.  We therefore have a road remembered by today's residents for one of the district's earlier entrepreneurs.

Wider Fleetville – that is houses, and of course, shops built in the first twenty years of the twentieth century between what we now know as The Crown and today's Recreation Ground; this swathe of rural St Peter's having been fields of St Peter's Farm for centuries.  The farmhouse, barns and two cottages were on the lower ground, which we are still familiar with as we walk westwards from the cemetery and descend to the traffic lights.  Behind the farmhouse, in use today by the Conservative Club, the sloping ground which was otherwise difficult to manage, was full of laurel shrubs.  Locals at the dawn of the twentieth century knew this little patch as the laurel bank.

The rear boundary line of the groups of villa houses in Clarence Road did not permit much development space for access in Hatfield Road.  Hence the first side road was very short, a mere nine homes altogether of which four were allowed for on the west side.  It was named Laurel Road because of undergrowth shrubbery of laurels, and this had to be cleared to allow sufficient space for the homes on the west side of the road.

In 1900 there was Woodstock Road (no north or south) beginning at  Sandpit Lane all the way in a straight line to the brand-new Brampton Road.  Then there was Thomas Smith who had laid out a short road for his employees from Hatfield Road to the boundary of the field he owned; this road he named Tess Road (after his own initials).  His field ended where a footpath followed the hedge line; today this footpath is still extant and survives as an alleyway behind nearby houses.  The gap between was a small field which became quickly developed, the linking road being named Princes Road in recognition of the Duke of York's children, Edward, David (to become George VI), Henry, George, and later, John.

These three separate, and separately numbered roads, remained as such until 1948, when Tess Road and Princes Road were combined as Woodstock Road South to follow a single numbering sequence, leaving the significantly longer Woodstock Road to be renamed Woodstock Road North.  At least we know why the suffixes North and South appeared on the street plates, while Princes Road came straight out of the local history books.

Finally in this sequence, the story begins with Wormleighton Road, which looked ok on the developer's map, and provided appropriate acknowledgement to the land owner whose historic family had lived at the early medieval manorial estate of Wormleighton.  Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, the name did not remain popular enough and for long enough for the residents who eventually moved in, though Wormleighton did survive one published version of the Ordnance Survey maps, partly, we suspect because it took so long the open up development along Upper Clarence Road.

We can only suggest that the reason for such a change of mind came because residents of these expensive early homes took a dislike to the name – as a word but not necessarily for its historical context.  Nor are we aware of whose decision it was to steer the name away from the medieval and closer to the more popular; and to be fair the original and the replacement proposal both contained the same number of letters (deliberate or accidental?).  The well-known artist Thomas Gainsborough's death was less than 150 years before a road dedicated to his memory, so more modern than medieval, then!  And the connection? Gainsborough was well revered in the Spencer family.  After all, the reputable artist had produced what was evidently a stunning portrait of the first Earl Spencer.  Naturally, given Spencer's renown in St Albans this was the ideal opportunity to recognise the connection between the medieval Wormleighton and Georgian artistry of Thomas Gainsborough. 

Comfort Break

Very many communities – district councils as well as local bodies responsible for areas of public interest – have been concerned for almost decades how the funds they spend on behalf of their residents are spent.  None seems to be raising the ire of constituents and visitors alike than the provision of public toilets.  It matters not where you are, the local authority has serious spending issues brought about during the past fifteen years or so or so by the twin constraints of tightened government grants and greater social responsibilities forced on them and draining funding which were not there previously.

For most it is a question of arm-behind-their-collective-backs spending restrictions limited to what authorities are required to undertake by law. Anything else they might only be able to include in the budget as long as there are a few coppers left over.

Modern experience has taught the authority public toilets are relatively expensive to provide, partly because of the costs of locking up, general maintenance and cleaning, and the apparently expensive, though irregular costs of repairing vandalism.  Why, oh why can't everyone treat their local public toilets as they would the bathrooms in their own homes?

Built for the Council when there was a certain pride in providing public toilets close to other
public facilities.  The Crown Toilets are long since closed and are converted into a restaurant/cafe.
COURTESY ST ALBANS MUSEUM+GALLERY

If you knew it was there you might use a toilet near the back of the Cricket Pavilion, at the
left of the above photograph.  No-one has mentioned that facility for years so it may no
longer be available.

Protect Clarence Park continues to be concerned about toilet provision in the Park.  Not surprising really; a family resource requires to have toilets which children should be comfortable using (in fact, all of us) safely and pleasantly when required, but facilities have barely changed in the past 75 years.  In fact, the Park's facilities are now less generous today because the Crown Toilets have long been converted into a restaurant. The Crown toilets, of course, were never within the Park anyway, but it is supposed they were built as an attraction for visitors to the Crown public house and hotel in its heyday as well as pedestrians to and from the city centre and to major events at the park, including its weekly football.

An old-fashioned men's urinal stood to the rear of the Cricket Pavilion.  It's not been there for
decades, but a similar structure still exists near the riverside at Twickenham.

The football area toilets, today are shared with the recreation zone.  Not well known are those near the bowls section, and of course at the cricket pavilion, while fortunately the men's distinctive urinal next to the fence behind the cricket pavilion, was fortunately lost in the fifties.  None can be blessed with a pleasant ambience and modern standards.

This building was constructed shortly before World War Two, on the edge of Fleetville
Recreation Ground (Fleetville Park). Closed, of course, and now converted into the
Beech Tree Cafe, although this image was taken a few years ago.

The toilets at Fleetville Park (Recreation Ground) facility, first opening in 1938, also long ago closed up and was converted to become the Beech Tree coffee shop.  The expectation being that those in need of relief would be able to use the supermarket – well done Morrisons! Those in the know pop into the Community Centre on another pretext and take the opportunity while there.

Much the same applied to the facilities at a more remote location in the East End; Cunningham Fields.

Sandridge Parish Council was sufficiently supportive to fund a toilet block at The Quadrant, but again, the quality of the facility is poor by modern standards.  One of the earliest locations, for men, used to be at the back of the Rats' Castle.

Young boys were sometimes given permission to make use of a customers' toilet at the back 
of the Rats' Castle, but this was an informal arrangement not known to have had a life beyond
the 1950s!

As far as I am aware there is no community provision anywhere in St Albans, and particularly, especially in or close to the centre and facilities signposted for visitors.  You may know of a favourite site, such as the Library, the Museum, Arena, Cathedral, swimming pool.  Other locations are difficult to get to even if they are open, and certainly not if they are now permanently closed.

We will hope for pleasanter times in the future so that we are not forced to plan our comfort visits before we leave the house!

Plugging Us In

 Before phones and electricity arrived in the East End of St Albans life was much simpler.  For a start housing had only just begun to creep past the railway and no building of any kind existed beyond what would later become The Rats' Castle.  Even street lights – which were manufactured in Campfield Road – were not lit on moonlit nights, assuming any had been installed!   We weren't even writing dates beginning with 19...  The first consumers of electricity were our Fleetville factories but there were no handy cables to plug into.  But there was, though, a railway line which brought coal almost to the door.  Inside the building a handy little generator the size of a domestic living room converted the coal into "electric" for light and to power machines.

Behind Camp Hill were the furnaces which burned the rubbish which
St Albans people created in the early years of the twentieth century.

... and at the rear of this building the early generators provided the energy early users of the
magic power we needed anywhere between the city centre and parts of Fleetville, for those
who could afford it.

The Council, forever searching for places to dump our rubbish, was one of the earlier authorities to burn it in an out-of-the-way location in Campfields and do away with most of the coal.  Individual generators were gradually replaced by larger equipment doing the same thing, and really big cables were laid under the footpaths – they're still doing that of course – to big metal boxes so that users of electric power could  connect up near to their properties.

The supply cable to businesses, factories and a few homes was connected here. Today
these boxes are still seen (this one is at The Crown).  Their modern-day  equivalents are
usually called kiosks.

By the 1930s houses pre-built with an electricity plug-in installation were big business. In fact, 
the Breakspear estate was known as the "Electric Estate" when first marketed from 1929.

Many small electrical businesses thrived on what they believed
would be a never-ending programme of conversion work as well 
as contract work for local house builders.

Home owners were proud to, rather inelegantly, wire their homes, to replace gas mantles, oil lamps and candles, intended to reduce the risk of fire.  A few householders took advantage of plugging a new-fangled electric toaster or even an electric heater into a room's dangling electric light socket.  That is how my grandmother made her breakfasts in her brand-new 1930 house.  Ours, built a decade later in a fast expanding East End, was far more advanced.  Not only did we have a light in the middle of each room, but there was a large two-pin plug in the two living rooms and kitchen.  Just in case, perhaps for the electric vacuum cleaner, any powered item was needed in the bedrooms, the builders fitted a socket in the least convenient location, on the landing.

If today's plethora of devices was forced to use pre-war supply sockets and their charging requirements we would still be in a pickle.  After the war a new arrangement of earthed three square pin sockets with their "ring mains" was invented, but it took an eternity to bring existing homes up to date.  In fact, many of today's new homes still come fitted with a bare minimum number of sockets. Hence the healthy sales figures for pre-wrapped 4-in-one trailing sockets.

But we are just beginning to make a return to how this electric game began.  An increasing number of householders are generating their own juice.  They are not, of course, buying in coal, but covering their roofs with solar panels and finding space for storage batteries.  Well, that's a whole lot better than great-grandpa's trip along the road to the motor garage to charge up the accumulator.  Nobody told me how heavy they were when you offered to help out for the first time!

Coal and generators at the beginning of the electricity story have now made way for fields of
solar panels and wind turbines so that our homes can be lit and heated, our devices charged 
and in some cases our car batteries topped up.

Today, many people who were born in the earlier decades of the last century, have lived through the entire history of domestic electricity supply and consumption and are now looking forward to the next local step forward – planting fields of solar panels at Smallford.  They are already to be discovered as we journey by train to places of interest. They are the latest crop on the landscape. And we have already stopped being excited by the necessity of buying 40, 60 or 100 watt "hot" lamps in favour of LEDs.  "Bought that one years ago and not needed to replace it yet".  Nothing stands still.

Street plates 1

 We have previously run a few items about the age and character of streets in the East End district.  The features have been irregular, very occasional and quite detailed.  This year we will return to the topic and identify a number of the district's roads, but in a briefer form – sufficiently short that we all may stand a chance of actually remembering the key information.  For example, last year a street plate was created on screen – this one; you may remember it:

The style does not appear on any actual street plate in St Albans, but is increasingly appearing in a number of locations, particularly where new suburbs are being developed, or redeveloped, nearby formerly historically important roads and/or properties.  Very often postcodes are added and perhaps geographic labelling  to inform about the boundaries of present local communities.  The street plates which appear in these regular, monthly blogs are more inventive than actual.  But the target has been for a road, once identified, to have its context explained in no more than two lines occupied by the sign as it might have appeared at each end of the road.  So, the example above was one you have seen previously.  Below begins the new series.

A residential street off Camp Road was developed in the 1930s on land previously owned by Friederick (to use the original Germanic spelling) Sander, the "Orchid King". Vanda Crescent, and other roads nearby, are named after varieties of orchid which the nursery bred and sold.  Comfortably within two lines of print.

People's names are more difficult to recall.  A small Oaklands cul-de-sac from the 1970s feels quite homely to its residents.  The rest of us may struggle to place a context to the name, but Michael Gresford Jones spent twenty years as the sixth Bishop of St Albans.  This sign also squeezes in a little additional phrase telling us what Bishop Gresford Jones went on to do in his retirement.

Hedley Road is a not very straight street between Sutton Road and Ashley Road.  It was laid out on land once owned by an industrial manufacturer of overcoats. Alfred Nicholson also wanted to attract other manufacturers to his plots of spare land nearby.  It was his prerogative after all, as the land owner, to name the road after his son – keep it in the family!

 

As with the orchids earlier a theme can be used to link more than one road; as is the case on the London Road estate where a former Admiral George Rodney is named on one road and the location of a key historical event he was associated with – Cape St Vincent –  nearby. The theme is Admirals of the Fleet, but individual persons don't necessarily have a connection with St Albans.

More street plates coming up in February.

The most recent 36

 Although the total number of posts now numbers 464 over 13 years – a challenge to complete if you've recently been introduced to St Albans' Own East End – I thought you might welcome a quick resume of the most recent 36.  Not much detail, but there will be sufficient to choose possible favourites.

In January we helped readers as today's post does, to review the best of 2023.  Having got that one out of the way, Bycullah helped with the history of a Fleetville street name where are its earliest shops. Incidentally, there's another Bycullah Terrace in North Watford. Tollgate discovered a road with apparently no tollgates but it did connect, more or less, two such charging points at either end of of Tollgate Road eastwards from Colney Heath.  A St Albans' seed supplying company, XL-ALL, had a very short life because its function was to copycat the company trading policy of Ryder's Seeds, which company moved to shut it down through court action.

February brought us the rare exploration of a road with the puzzling name of origin: Gurney Court Road; then the field Camp Field, which later gave its label to a street name.  We lingered in the same district of Camp to wonder why history erroneously suggested a much older reason for its beginning.  Could it refer to Roman occupation – or not? Spoiler: Not!

March took us on a walk from the previous week's location, along Cell Barnes Lane towards the ancient properties of Cell Barnes.  We moved on to a specially created track, later road, where its present name is no longer New Road. Another unfamiliar location was Chain Bar Toll; which is currently referred to as The Crown.

April: You may have wondered the location of Dellfield, for when you come across it the road is more often bypassed because, as with many other minor highways, it leads nowhere, except in a circle. A quiet anniversary arrived this month, celebrating a 1904 event known as Entente Cordiale: marking an agreement between the UK and France.  Streets are sometimes named at the behest of the builders who bring out of the ground the homes along them.  These are the streets we (or they) named.

Very definitely not pretentious, even in May, we visited Muddy Alley (or Muddy Lane) though it has a very different title today.  You may not have heard of the Selwyn estate; and if not you may not have heard of Mr Selwyn either.  If you like your names and other labels correctly referred to you will also wish others to punctuate appropriately: so is it St Peter's Close or St Peters Close?

In June we made our regular visit to the Hertfordshire Show, which in 1953, arrived at Oak Farm in Cooper's Green Lane.  We laid out our story of London Colney Secondary School, which closed in 1984, and invited readers to fill in some of its gaps.  When the pupils of Beaumont Boys' School made a visit to Fecamp, in the vicinity of La Havre, not more than twelve years after the D-Day landings (D-Day + Twelve), they were within a few short miles of the beaches, without a word of reference ever made to that historic event.  They could have touched the sand but they departed without being introduced.

July celebrated the 60th anniversary of Nicky (Nicholas Breakspear School – Nicky is Sixty Plus) and we traced the history of Catholic education in this city. We peeped back to work out how a plot of land in Brampton Road could achieve making something fit – that something being a school.  The same had become true for another school, often playing catch up with the system; so more of the same.

August: If you can't drive through, perhaps you can by-pass it; which is what became possible in the 1950s if you wished to avoid driving through St Albans.  Back to schools there used to be many more of them, but they were  (it's) private: Oxford House, Rochester House, Manor Lodge, Merrilands, Birklands and others.

September Brought us more private schools: Lyndale, Loreto, Dirleston House and others.  On the roads we have all discovered hills and ill-fitting junctions, and frequently wonder on the ladder jobs.

In the Autumn Fleetville residents gazed as a well-known building gained a topper, or another floor.  It may be rare to discover new old maps, perhaps, but Kitchin in Harts described a different map of the county; also a new (or old) spelling for it!  Developers are occasionally unable to complete their projects, and in Cape and Burleigh we discover a possible reason why.

November arrives and we focus on a character who thought he would do Fleetville a good turn, but in Repeat Performance he also tried at Luton with no greater success.  A building owner in Fleetville (been here before) tried to change its name once, and now wants to try again. Will it be more successful second time round? And at Oaklands we show you how they succeeded in piping a supply to a mansion and farm before the days of a public water supply.

Bringing us up to date we are always wracking our brains to find spaces for new houses – somewhere new to live.  And planning applications are not just for houses but new student accommodation as well.  The year almost closed with recollections via the Herts Advertiser describing key events one hundred years ago, in nineteen twenty-four.

Finally, you don't need to read The most recent 36: you've just done that!

So, enjoy a ramble through thirty-six recent posts during the dying embers of the old year...

In this slight pause between Christmas and New Year warm greetings to all. 

Nineteen Twenty Four

 As we approach the end of the year and as we often gather with friends and family we tend to recall people and events we have shared. The extent of them is largely governed by the age of those who are participating in the game, if that is what it might be called.

It is doubtful if such activity will telescope back a full century; so this is where the first volume of St Albans' Own East End comes in handy. Here, then, is a brief trawl around our city's eastern districts to discover what was occupying people's minds in 1924.

We begin with small fires spotted in two unoccupied buildings by observant nearby residents who were fortunate to find access to a telephone.  First, a Sunday passer by to Nicholson's coat factory in Sutton Road, and the morning after a late performance at the Grand Palace Cinema in Stanhope Road. Neither fire was serious, but both gained a small item in the Herts Advertiser.

Sunday, any Sunday, had a very quiet atmosphere.  Shops remained closed, as were theatres and cinemas.  Even council-owned recreation grounds were closed, or where necessary, children's play equipment was padlocked. A fair proportion of the population attended church and/or Sunday school.  So two young men having a kick about with a football in Camp Lane were apprehended by a duty policeman.  That incident as well was featured in the local newspaper.

1924 saw the removal of the line of trees in Victoria Street at the former home of Samuel Ryder.
Within a short time shops lined the road where the trees had been.

Samuel Ryder, proprietor of a seed firm and donor of what is today a well known golf trophy, had just moved into a house in Clarence Road. While his previous house survives as a small part of Loreto College, preparations were being made to fell a line of trees alongside Victoria Street which had formed the boundary of his garden, replaced by shops at the front, and houses at Marlborough Gate behind.  There was much public disquiet concerning this "improvement".

Clarence Park had opened in 1894, and one of its features had been a bandstand, in the same position as today's structure which is seen in the photo below.  It was a timber structure topped with brushwood, and which by 1924 had deteriorated so badly the structure required replacement. The Council, however, declined to take responsibility for  its replacement.

The Hatfield Road side of Clarence Park had, before 1894, been a field belonging to St Peter's Farm.
It was known as the Fete Field as a number of public events had taken place here.  Those events
continued to take place as the Herts Advertiser reported in 1924.

Completed homes on the Springfield Estate.

A slow start had finally been made in laying out the ground between Camp Lane and Cell Barnes Lane for St Albans' contribution towards World War One's Homes for Heroes, to be known as the Springfield estate. Earl Verulam had agreed to sell his Cunningham Hill Field to the Council for the purpose.  There would be another four years of building before its completion.

August Bank Holiday was always a celebration fete and sports day, and 1924 was no exception.  Such events had taken place even before Clarence Park had been laid out on a field commonly known as the Fete Field.  This open space became the recreation ground of the park and fetes continued to be held there until they were later transferred to the more spacious Verulamium Park.

This wold have been one of many posters put up in advance of Bill Cody's Wild West Shows.
But it was a copy-cast event which arrived in St Albans in 1924, three years after the closure of
the final Buffalo Bill's entertainment.

1924 saw the arrival in town of a travelling show cunningly close in name to Buffalo Bill's famous Wild West Show. It was named Bronco Bill's Wild West Show!  As many circuses and shows did at the time, it pitched up on the Gaol Field, now developed between Camp Road, Alban Way and Flora Grove.  With so little other permanent  entertainment in the town such shows were highly popular. In 1924 residents were just a few years too late to witness Bill Cody's genuine show.  People were beginning to feel its entertainment rather dated, and with a few racist elements too.  But that didn't stop Bronco Bill from attempting a copy-cat version.

Electricity had come to town at the very beginning of the century and the "electric snake" had been buried under pavements in the roads around Campfield Road's electricity station.  In 1924 the NorthMet company planned to extend the cable to envelop an area around north and east St Albans – its precise route is unknown today – in anticipation of future factories and homes.  How excited we must have been!

Since 1921 there had been considerable expansion in the bus services offered, including a new route to a new place called Welwyn Garden City.  But it was also possible to ride from St Albans all the way to Hitchin and Bishops Stortford without changing, suddenly bringing Fleetville very much closer in travelling time.

The sale of Hill End, and to a lesser extent part of Beaumonts Farm had encouraged house building on the south side of Hatfield Road.  Until 1924 housing stopped at Beaumont Avenue and Ashley Road was still a muddy track; the next few years would see see main road growth as far as Oaklands.

Marshalls Wick House remained unsold in 1924, and within a short time the house will have
been demolished and the former private drive will, with a little alteration, have become a
public Marshals Drive.

Several unsuccessful attempts had been made to provide an alternative use for the old Marshalls Wick House.  While plans for laying out roads on the surrounding grounds had begun, but in 1924 the house did not appear to be wanted for anything.

In other parts of St Albans, farmers protested at the poor market facilities in Market Square (the area in front of the St Albans Museum + Gallery).  Two of the three existing railway stations, all called St Albans, were renamed St Albans City and St Albans Abbey; the result of a re-grouping of smaller companies which had taken place the previous year.

Finally, the formal closure took place of the old prison in Grimston Road.  Of course today the front and outer wall looks the same;  the prison cell block removal was the main loss.