Twenty-Five Minutes Missing

Green flag award open space, Hatfield Road cemetery.

 Among the most relaxing and peaceful periods of time in the bustle of Fleetville may be spent wandering the paths of Hatfield Road Cemetery.  A few years ago a group of us discovered some unusual stories among its residents laid to rest.  So I have brought together a small number in an occasional series.  Here is the first.

On the western side of the burial ground is the final resting place for a 40-year old Asian man who, in 1974, almost no-one could to admit knowing.  So intriguing was this man's unfortunate story that the investigating police officer was the only mourner at his burial, using his experience to track down the man's parents and brother in Singapore.

We know nothing of his private live, other than he lived alone in a bed-sit somewhere in the city; the Blacksmith's Arms overlooking St Peter's Street was considered to be his "local"; and that he worked as a wireman at a firm in Welwyn Garden City, and since there was no evidence of a car we assume he used the former 330 bus from St Peter's Street to the Garden City.

The man was known as Tan: Francis Tan Kim Choo.

From those people who did claim to know him and who frequented the Blacksmith's Arms, confirmed he was, I suppose like many of us, a creature of habit.  He would sit on his own each evening in one of the bars, acknowledging everyone who came in, but no-one seemed to talk to him.  After last orders and closure he would remain behind to assist with washing up before disappearing back to his best-sit.

Blacksmiths Arms public house on the corner of Hatfield Road and St Peter's Street.
This was Tan's nightly visiting place.

But one night, his last, was different.

Tan, instead of remaining behind, left the pub promptly at 10.30, carrying with him a white plastic bag.  At the same time, and from another bar, a woman left.  They later met in St Peter's Street and agreed to go somewhere for a Chinese meal.  They were next seen near the junction of Chequer Street and London Road.  A large car drew up and the driver offered the pair a lift.

Today's London Road with Chequer Street out of shot on the left. The pick-up car would 
have faced along London Road to pick up Tan and the un-named woman; and Tan's  
lodgings were nearby along this road.
COURTESY GOOGLE STREETVIEW

The lift was accepted, but the woman changed her mind about the intended meal, and Tan then decided to leave the car – at this point he was close to his lodgings.  The time then was 11.20pm.  Twenty five minutes later Tan's body was discovered, covered in blood, in the driveway of a house opposite Great Cell Barnes former nurses quarters in Hill End Lane (now Emmaus).

Hill End Lane at the former nurses quarters, now Emmaus.  Opposite there are a number 
of houses.  This is where Tan was maimed, run over and lost his life.  How did he get 
from London Road to Hill End Lane as he had apparently left the pick up car at or  
near the Peahen junction, London Road?
COURTESY GOOGLE STREETVIEW

There are still several still-unanswered questions:

Since he had left the car, how did he reach Hill End in so short a time? He would have had to run all of the way, but then, why would he have needed to?

Why, on this night of all nights was his normal routine broken?

What was in the white bag and what happened to it?

Was the meeting of Tan and the woman anything other than co-incidental?

Who was the driver of the car and why was the lift offered? Possibly more to the point, why was it accepted, and was it accepted by the woman or Tan?

Tan was buried in a public grave approximately where the light blue marker lies.
A police officer was the only attendant at his burial.

The police evidence stated that Tan had been struck by a red car, thrown several feet, and as he lay in the driveway with his skull fractured and legs partly in the roadway, a moped ran over him.  So there must have been at least one witness in Hill End Lane.  But the drivers of neither vehicle were never traced.

But there was another intriguing element to Tan's story.  In writing how to his parents Tan had told of his wife and child.  The police officer had discovered this when he wrote to Singapore to inform them of their son's death.  His mother had wanted the insurance money to be spent on the child.  Hey had to be informed that there was no wife and there was no child.  Tan, it appears, had made for himself an invented family for the benefit of his parents.

A poorly photocopied copy of a published
photograph of Tam.  This may have been
the only surviving image of Tan.
COURTESY THE HERTS ADVERTISER

So, here is a trio of final questions: was there an intended rendevous that fateful evening?  Did Tan make that rendevous?   Dis it have something to do with the white plastic bag?

There is a period of just twenty-five minutes missing in the life of the city and of this man's life: Thursday 4th July 1974, from 11.20 to 11.45pm.

First and Last House

Traditionally a house builder would lay out his street plan of proposed houses, select one of the plots and then start building on those around it.  The plot held back would then be used as the firm's store yard.  This would become a busy hub for deliveries of materials, meeting point for building employees and base for the site manager/foreman.  Near the end of the contract the builders' years would be cleared and the final house built.  

The Hatfield Road face of the Beaumonts estate today.  Among the house builders of the estate
were G N Burgess, A A Welch, H C Janes and Harvey & Webster.
COURTESY GOOGLE STREETVIEW

Although I am not certain of the name of the house builder in the case of Hatfield Road, between Beechwood Avenue and Oakwood Drive on the north side, the sale of Beaumonts Farm did not take place until 1929, and the new edition of Kelly's Street Directory was dated 1930.  By then all but six of the forty-two new homes had been completed and occupied, which seems to be a remarkable pace, especially considering that it is known there was usually a delay in the publication of changes in addresses.

The plot held back for use as the builders' pound had been numbered 267 but left blank in Kelly's for many years.  The plot lay barren with no attempt to build on it, and becoming overgrown; the boundary hedge line grew taller and the open space – still growing the kind of weeds and grasses which had previously grown as a source for grazing on the farm.  Thus it remained until it was tidied after the Second World War, when  occasionally occupied by an arriving vagrant who slept beneath the hedgerow.

The future 267 plot as seen in the mid 1950s with the former police box.  The poster frame 
pointing to Tacchi & Burgess's site in Sandpit Lane and Chestnut Drive, their poster having
been stuck over the earlier 1929 board for Watford Land which purchased the farm. The word 
WATFORD is just visible at the base of the original poster and underneath the red arrow.
COURTESY PHILIP ORDE 

A recent Aerial photo of 267 at the junction of Beechwood Avenue
and Hatfield Road.
COURTESY GOOGLE EARTH

There was change too along the footpaths of Beechwood Avenue and Hatfield Road from the late 1930s.  The City Police had sited timbered cabins for their officers to use (and the public in emergency situations), the nearest being on the corner of Hatfield Road and Sutton Road.  Just before the start of the war the cabins were replaced by brick structures and the Sutton Road building transferred to the Beechwood Avenue corner where today is the floral bedding on the corner.  When the police box was eventually demolished a red phone box arrived on the boundary between the 267 plot and house number 269, before it was relocated to a safer position at the entrance to Beaumont Avenue – it's no longer there either!  A letter posting box was also an early arrival in a convenient position near the Beechwood Avenue junction, and in 1939 a large and substantial brick walled structure with thick concrete roof became a bomb shelter for pedestrians caught in the open during  an air raid.  Although sealed up when Peace arrived that did not stop vagrants – and occasional children – to make an entrance, before its final removal in the mid fifties.

On the road itself the junction became increasingly worrisome as sightlines were poor, Ashley Road was still unmade and history chose this part of Hatfield Road to be formed into a bend.  As Beechwood and Ashley became part of the ring road, traffic signals were installed, although these did not include Beaumont Avenue.  Finally a double roundabout was devised.

T&B's c1960 house taken c2000.  The public flower bed replaces the former police box
location as shown in the second photograph above.

Plan from the planning application to St Albans District Council.

267 in the process of demolition
COURTESY DAVID GAYLARD

In the mid-1950s the well-known building firm of Tacche & Burgess began erecting homes in Sandpit Lane, opposite Rose Walk.  To advertise these inviting homes T&B erected a large poster board on the 267 plot – so perhaps it was this firm who purchased the plot afterward finally built number 267, a detached property.  A vehicle driveway was laid at the boundary with 269, and a separate pedestrian gate appeared halfway along the public flower bed, although we are hard-pressed to discover the gate today because of encroaching undergrowth and trees.

The Beechwood Avenue boundary was originally timbered and then became a brick wall, at times becoming an attractive surface for informal paintwork!  Vehicles moved to the Beechwood end of the property.

The house in its present form is now being torn down and replaced with a semi-detached pair, having reached the grand old age of 65 years.  Work is currently underway and the pedestrian gate will be revealed once more; one garden will become two, and we presume 267 will have a partner in 267a.  Each house will have parking space for two cars, although the drive-in for 267a appears, from the plan, to cross part of the public flower bedding.  We will discover in time, no doubt, how that will be managed.

And so, an increasing number of residential plots, sufficiently sized to form a spacious setting, are having additional and smaller homes being squeezed between the party walls or fences.

For those who have no memory of a public air raid shelter below is a photo of one from a different location.

Street shelter with the entrance unseen at the far end.  There would also have been an
emergency "window", here hidden on the left side.

Street Plates 3

 I expect a number of blog readers are beginning to pay closer attention to street plates they pass regularly in their home area, and/or those signs which are not where you expected them to be located, or appear to be missing altogether.  This week I began to wonder how unusual various addresses are, or alternatively, how frequently they are to be found, and why that might be.

Let's begin with the first of this week's bunch: Stanhope Road. A relatively short street in Victorian St Albans and part of the housing expansion which came about through the opening of the Midland Railway in the 1860s; the filling in of a field on the eastern boundary of St Albans Midland Station (Midland because there were already two other stations named St Albans, and it was added to the Midland Railway).  Today it is renamed St Albans City.  But back to the street which attracted commuters – no doubt a novel name in the 1880s.  St Albans was fond of recognising important or notable figures associated with the town. Flash the title Duchess of Marlborough about (and you've no doubt already made an connection with Marlborough Road) and the name St Albans' people associate with that title is Sarah Churchill, who we will return to on another occasion.

The Duchess made many bequests in favour of government minister Philip Henry Stanhope, the fourth Earl of Chesterfield.  The fourth Earl (1781 to 1855) just happened to to be president of the Medico Botanical Society of London from 1829 and was honoured by having a genus of orchid, Stanhopea in his name.  And of course Sander's Orchid Nursery was just at the foot of the hill joining the newly named Stanhope Road.  How many Stanhope Roads may be nationally found?  The National Gazetteer identifies 53 others, and only one other, Waltham Cross, in our county.

Next, we feature two roads which are unique.  The first is Puddingstone Drive.  Not even any other Puddingstone, whether Drive, Avenue or any other suffix.  Puddingstone Drive came into being resulting from the proximity of a rare geological feature nearby.  The drive is one of those road layouts found in a number of late twentieth century residential developments which begins logically enough at a T junction, in this case Highfield Lane, but then is given free rein to wander.  The road circumvents a collection of mature trees which were previously part of Cell Barnes Hospital estate and now a pleasant green space between the houses; and then includes a diversion to take in a small group of homes which would otherwise have to be called something else!

If you have never come across the geological feature previously think of it an irregularly shaped boulder of conglomerate rock which looks rather like rough concrete and found mainly in Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire; rare enough to match the rarity of the street plate of the same name!

The other rare name in this month's collection is Milvus Road.  The National Gazetteer identifies no other with this name in the UK.  And if you have not come across the name before most of us will recognise red or black kites in the skies around us, and especially in the Chilterns.  These are raptors or, if you like, birds of prey.  Check their details in a specialist bird book or view stunning video clips online.  Milvus Road does not stand alone; there is a little collection of raptors in the newly completed Oaklands Grange located along Sandpit Lane.  Unique as befits the glory of red kites in the skies across the Herts and Bucks countryside.

Someone thought to select a small group of men who had come to prominence at or shortly before the twentieth century dawned. They stood apart for their command skills within the British Army.  A small group of roads in the Cell Barnes (formerly known as London Road estate) were selected for such an honour.  Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig led the Expeditionary Force throughout most of the First World War.  His was also the name behind the unique and continuing fund raising charity supporting ex-servicemen and women.  It was called  the Haig Fund and is what the red poppies represent.  Through most of the period since 1921, when the fund began, Haig's name appeared on each poppy; it now reads Poppy Appeal.  I wonder whether a poppy appears on one of the street plates in Haig Close each November.

There are countless examples of Haig (rather than Haigh) in the country's roads.  Of the eight versions of Haig Close, plus one Earl Haig Close, this is the only example in Hertfordshire.

Finally, an example of a road which sported one name and then a need to change that name was realised.  Of course there could have been many reasons for that action, but in this case it was confusion caused to the postal service and a certain amount of carelessness during the addressing of envelopes.  The Marshalswick road which linked woodland surrounding Marshalswick Farm and nearby Skyswood led to the rather obvious name of Woodlands Avenue being applied in 1938 to the formative estate.  No-one appeared to make the connection with a road of almost the same name on a nearby estate just a few years earlier: Woodland Drive. The similarity resulted in frequent confusion, with post intended for one road being sent to the other, and even the spellings were transposed, So, choose any combination of Woodland and Woodlands, Avenue and Drive!

In selecting an alternative and coming up with Sherwood Avenue, there were locals who mused over the continuing connection with woodlands and a legend popular in our culture.  Instead, the connection was on residents' doorsteps.  With the formation of the parish of St Mary, daughter of St Leonards, Sandridge, in 1948, the driving force behind much of the groundwork in creating the new parish and its new church of St Mary had come from the Reverend Michael Sherwood. For the residents of the parish the renaming would have been a personal and community honour, and they certainly would not have been aware that throughout the UK there would have been 54 other Sherwood Avenues. 

 Surprisingly, perhaps, for the most famous of all forests, only six of the 54 known Sherwood Avenue examples are located in the county of Nottingham!  Time to remind ourselves that other labels are also available; there are six Sherwood Avenues in Notts, but there would be Sherwood Roads (7), Closes (0), Drives (1) et al.

 

Eighty Years On

 Eighty years ago the residents living in our part of Hertfordshire were relieved to begin the experiences of mopping up World War Two, a process which would engage us all for many years, but at least, so they theory goes, we could look forward to a more peaceful and positive life.

So, here we look back to note a few of the main stories the Herts Advertiser covered during the key year of 1945.  In January the recently published Greater London Plan was discussed and the largest project on the agenda, especially for Redbourn, was the proposal for another of those new towns for Hertfordshire – actually a huge expansion for a small town already on the map: Hemel Hempstead.  The Report also wanted significant expansion east of St Albans, although the proposed limit was set at the outer boundary of Butterwick.  The reason for this location was not stated at the time but later revealed to preserved a green strip to separate from another new town to be attached to an existing community: Hatfield.

The building which had been the focus for military training and army volunteering alike, the Drill Hall, was also the focus for a celebration in January.  Members of the Home Guard, having been stood down from their volunteering roles were given the opportunity to bring their children for a grand party – food permitting – a family "let-your-hair-down" event.  The Drill Hall was at the top of Hatfield Road where today is the Alban City School; the site also served as a bus garage!

An impromptu street celebration in Camp district who were just thankful the conflict was over.
COURTESY THE HERTS ADVERTISER

St Albans was still a dark town and would continue to be so until public street light would, we were told, be switch on once more in July.  Although people had been used to darkened streets since 1940, the state of affairs was an irritation, and a sometimes dangerous nuisance.

One of those street renamings took place at the end of January, for Union Lane, a turning off lower Catherine Street, celebrating the recent Normandy Landings from 1944.  From now it would become known as Normandy Road, the entry to one of the sites of St Albans Hospital.

The bitter February weather encouraged a rare opportunity to skate on the frozen Verulamium lakes.  Although they had been emptied at the start of the war, it is presumed they had been re-filled later, or allowed to refill, otherwise no skating would have been possible.

By Easter everyone with Anderson and Morrison shelters was given permission to dismantle them, although we were reminded that they were all the property of the Government.  Does anyone know whether the shelters were eventually collected?

For some years there would be a shortage of a number of materials and products.  We continued to remain relatively cold indoors as there was an acute shortage of coal, as huge advertising campaigns would attest.

Culver hall was one of so many buildings formerly requisitioned by the military "for the duration".  The hall was returned to its owners in poor condition, but there was an improvement programme; renamed St Saviour's Parish Hall, its functions include dancing and boxing events.  Proper dressing rooms also made it a popular venue for drama.

Trinity Church was a unique organisation in promoting press advertising for its regular services and special events, resulting in large congregations and audiences to fill the building's 750 seats.  People were beginning to feel more confident about "going out" in the evenings again.

Trinity Church hosted events of music, lectures and drama as well as its regular services
throughout the war.  When the Peace came there was no change in its approach.
COURTESY THE HERTS ADVERTISER

The condition of ultra narrow Marshalswick Lane was poor, and would have to join the queue (life was full of queues).  Until that takes place the bus to Marshalswick would travel via Sandridge Road as far as the King William IV public house, Beech Road; passengers having to walk from there.

A proposal was announced to improve the City Station and renew the road bridge to a 64-foot dual carriageway – except that it never happened.

In May St Albans Rural Council published its statistics on the numbers and locations of bombs which had been dropped and casualties since 1940. We need to remember, military personnel were not the only casualties of war.

London Road's Capitol cinema was formally renamed Odeon in June, although the Grand Palace cinema would not yet take its new name of Gaumont for a while.  The Odeon, of course, is still very much alive under new ownership as the Odyssey cinema.

The Grange in St Peter's Street is another property which had been in use by the army and now released, but in "dreadful condition."

St Bartholomew's Hospital (Barts at Hill End) first announced its wish to remain in St Albans.  However, department by department it did return to the City of London and finally relinquished Hill End in the early 1960s.

The Pioneer Youth Club (in more ways than one) acquired The Elms in Upper Marlborough Road; another sign of re-organisation for peaceful times ahead.

The air-raid sirens were taken over by the fire service to call part-time foremen for emergency duty.  Radios were non-existent and there was a considerable shortage of telephone equipment.

Before the end of 1945 new housing programmes had already restarted, depending on the
funding available.  This site was in Hazelwood Drive.
COURTESY THE HERTS ADVERTISER

Discussions began on merging the city's own police force with the county-wide force, a process which would bear fruit in 1948, although it did not find favour with the City Council.

Trinity Church arranged another 'first' with the Odeon Cinema.  The first peacetime Nativity, a 15 minute drama, was performed between two of the films being shown in December.

And in the middle of all this, we stopped to celebrate the end of hostilities on 8th May, and again the following day in support of the many Channel Islanders who had become part of our communities since 1940.

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!