Rescue mission 1

 As long-standing readers of this blog will recall, I try to remind readers occasionally of landscape features which at one time existed somewhere in our district, or perhaps still exist but may have changed since they were last known to exist.  Of course there is a real possibility that a particular feature, well-known as it might have been, was nevertheless never knowingly photographed, except remaining as an incidental part of a scene taken for a quite different reason.  

The Sear & Carter partnership had a shop with a side and rear nursery plot next to St Paul's Church
until it was replaced by St Paul's Place.

In many cases a part of the landscape may be retained uniquely, having been photographed once, and only once, the result remaining the sole survivor of a place which at one time would have been quite common or well frequented. Photos in the form of private collections of paper pictures –  even glass slides from the early days of photography, or card mounted slides from the "popular post-war" period of colour photography.  All have been resilient over time and have survived multiple house moves and changes of family owner.  Until ...  Most end up the subject of a decision, whether to retain or throw, or perhaps pass to a relative in the hope of extending a collection's life.

We may believe that modern digital photographs stand the best chance of survival considering the vast number of clicks.  Not so, as most digitals are considered temporary, and their sheer quantity makes sorting and sifting a challenging task for even the most fastidious of us.

So here are the first two challenges to establish whether their subjects still form a small part of someone's collection somewhere ... anywhere!

Sear & Carter Nursery, Smallford

The company had several trial grounds, their largest being at the former New Zealand 
Nurseries.  Sear & Carter opened the Smallford site as their main sales nursery until 1967.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

Sear & Carter used the field in the centre.  Hatfield Road crosses the picture from left to right 
right.  The photograph was from the 1946 RAF aerial survey.

Photo shows Hatfield Road looking to the east.  On the left is the former toll house and
the old Four Horseshoes Beer House, beyond which was the entrance to Sear &
Carter's Nursery; the same entrance used by Notcutts today.

The partnership of Frank Sear and Thomas Carter had become established in the early years of Fleetville.  They had a shop and a small nursery next to St Paul's Church, the church being on the corner  of Hatfield and Blandford roads.  When the business moved in 1960 it was to a significantly larger location opposite the Three Horseshoes public house and near to what used to be known as Smallford Crossroads (but of course that became a roundabout many decades ago).  This little location had been home to several market gardening and plant nurseries, the largest survivor, once called Nielsen's, has arguably become the most successful in still trading as Glinwell.

However, another had been called (or perhaps sent would be more appropriate after their council eviction) to the New Zealand Nurseries. The New Zealand had, in the late 19th century, having moved there from where Loreto College was later established. S&C then acquired the Smallford site, at which time a bungalow was recalled at the end of a long drive from Hatfield Road.  Later in the sixties the Sear & Carter nursery finally sold out to Notcutts, a firm already trading with other garden centres.  Notcutts, of course is even more successful today, as Smallford was the second of what is now a network of nineteen garden centres.

Notcutt's entrance drive today.  In the 1960's you would have used the same turning when
the owning company was Sear & Carter.

Even today the Sear & Carter era is believed to remain in a small number of memories, of which the bungalow appears to have become the dominant feature of the site; the entrance being in the same place we drive in to the modern centre today.  Does a photograph exist, perhaps with the name board which may not be recalled by everyone.  Indeed, this period is beyond the lifetimes of a large swathe of the population!  It may help to be reminded that a short collection of roadside buildings were then on that side of the road, including a beer house named the Four Horseshoes – not be be confused with the Three Horseshoes on the other side of the road!

Co-operative Supermarket, Hatfield Road

Today, probably the most well-known location in Fleetville is that of Morrison's Supermarket; no need to describe it in much detail.  Before the 1890s it was a field between the branch railway and the recently de-tolled turnpike Hatfield Road, and in 1897 work was seriously underway to build a printing works of significant size for the Fleet Street business of Thomas E Smith.  No doubt as a firm it would have lasted for much longer and didn't even make it until the end of the First World War.  But as a building it was occupied by Grubb Telescopes for a few years, before being acquired by the Cotzin brothers for the hugely successful Ballington Hosiery Mill, also known as Ballito, the brand name of its product range.  Only in 1967 was the original structure vacated and eventually torn down.

The Bindery department in the T E Smith printing works taken c1906.

The same building was taken on in some secrecy during the First World War for submarine
periscope work and later for the construction of large telescopes.  The company name was
Howard Grubb.

The site had reached maximum capacity after the Second World War as Ballito and
Marconi Instruments both used the original structure "with a few additions".

Then St Albans Co-operative Society changed its provisions policy of peppering single-unit shops around the town in favour of a more central supermarket in a building specifically designed for it.  The Co-op Supermarket was the focus of the 1980s, but in less than a decade the company sold out to the giant of the day, Safeway, in a larger new building.  Finally the giant of the North invaded; Morrison's took over Safeway's existing building and then extended further.  So, in the space of 130 years six businesses have traded here in three different buildings.  

The missing sequence is St Albans Co-operative Society.  Safeway redeveloped the site
before being taken on and further enlarged by Morrison's.

Photography has given us a number of images of the printing works in use, and of the telescope assembly within the same building.  Archives are overflowing with pictures; Ballito's use of photography to help sell its product range is well known.  Even Safeway and Morrison have their building styles which can be identified wherever you are.  But after that, what can you say?  A supermarket is just a supermarket.

But the Co-op should have stood out in the smaller food shop style manual.  It was before today's standard boxes, more human in processing its customers through their visits, and it helped to lead the way towards creating bespoke localised regional supermarket brands now found across the country.  You wouldn't class the Co-op building as stylish but then it didn't spend unnecessary amounts on the bricks, mortar and glass.

What I have failed to locate, however, are photos of Fleetville's first supermarket: the Co-op, was to have been at its own vehicle maintenance depot in Sutton Road, until turned down by Planning.  Did anyone take their camera with them on the store's opening day, for example; or even on the final day of trading before the 'dozers moved in to level the ground once more .  Or, of course on any day between. 

Cover pictures 3

The Camp public house

This week's post features the Camp PH on the centre of the top row
of the book's first volume cover.

Striking out through the East End from Hatfield to St Albans we would pass by, or call in at, the Comet Hotel, the Three Horseshoes PH, the Bunch of Cherries (now the Speckled Hen PH), the Rats' Castle PH (now the Old Toll House PH), the Crown PH (formerly hotel), the Mermaid PH, the Peacock PH – at which the turnpike road began or ended – and the final pair, the Cock PH and the Blacksmith's Arms PH both guarding the entry to St Peter's Street.  All but the final four are firmly within the limits of our East End.  The arrival of the Midland Railway produced the Hatfield Road Bridge which produced in turn the extension of the built-up town in the East End.

The traditional names of the remainder were related to their locations: The Comet Hotel signalled the de Havilland Aircraft Company on it new site in the 1930s; the Three Horseshoes located the farrier's trade, the restaurant how very much a part of the blacksmith's shop; the Bunch of Cherries was built immediately after the Second War adjacent to the cherry orchard leading towards Winches farm homestead; the Rats' Castle was named after the sobriquet of the previous toll house on the site; and finally, although there was no Crown nearby, the hotel/PH was able to locate here because of the transfer of its license from its earlier site in Holywell Hill of today's Abbey Court.

The illustrator's imaginative mind of Camp Hill some two centuries too late and
out of geographic area!
COURTESY HALS

One public house – on two different sites – were situated to the south of Hatfield Road and one to the north of that road, even though neither is now trading: the Camp PH and the Baton PH.  The photograph on the front cover is the hanging sign which was taken outside the former.  Its picture depicts a tented camp scene, and so we should look back to discover more of its location.  We enter the Camp story at its end, for the public house has now closed. It was at the corner of Roland Street and Camp Road.  Ah! Camp Road; that's definitely a Camp, then?

The Camp PH until its demolition c 2016 on the corner of Camp Road and Roland Street

The Old Camp Beer House nearby at the top of Camp Hill; closed c1914.

The social scene at the New Camp PH included darts and football teams, and outings.
COURTESY ALISON MANN

The Ordnance Survey's First Edition 1830 map marks a single building at Camp Hill.
Camp House, near the top of this extract.

The pub, initially titled the New Camp PH, definitely moved from the top of Camp Hill where there had been a watering hole named the Old Camp Beer House.  But if searching older maps of this little corner at the top of the hill we will first of all discover a squarish building named Camp House.  That might have given the impression of a domestic premises at the junction of Camp Road and Cell Barnes Lane. And a dwelling it may have been. The field on the Cunningham side of the road had been the extensive site of a  military training camp during the period before there was a national standing army.  It is presumed that the only available building appropriate for provisioning large numbers of men for short periods of time was the the camp house as named on maps of the 19th century maps.  The last occasion on which training manoeuvres are known to have taken place here was at the beginning of World War One, and the tents used were conical in shape – just like those on the pub sign.  

A postcard photograph of a tented village at the lower, London Road, end of the Springfield
training ground early in the 1914-18 war.  The illustrator used similar designs for his 
"Roman" scene.

But where does the centurion, also depicted on the sign, come into the story?  Well, of course, it doesn't.  The illustrator's imagination and historical knowledge of Roman Verulamium are definitely mis-aligned.  Soldiers and their officers would have no business being billeted at the top of a hill some way beyond there Roman city; no town of St Albans then.

COURTESY GOOGLE STREETVIEW

The fact that a modern commercial building halfway up Camp Hill gave its name to the recent flats and has been named Centurion Court is also a distraction and no link at all to our story. But no verifiable information about a field at Cunningham, otherwise known as Springfield, being used for military training nearly two millennia ago.  But there is, of course, nothing wrong with combining imaginative events.

This image earns its place on the cover of Volume One of St Albans' Own East End  simply because it combines fact and fiction and is part of the local story of our part of St Albans.

Cover Pictures 2

 

This week's visit to the St Albans' Own East End book cover is represented by 
a former turnpike milepost, this one at Fleetville Recreation ground.,

We cannot be unaware of a number of mile posts along Hatfield Road, as well as a surviving one on St Stephens Hill.  They are certainly not current types, quite apart from the reason we no longer mark miles along ordinary roads.  This second of a series, as shown above, appeared on the front cover of the first volume of the book St Albans' Own East End. It had appeared on the top row, and many residents of the Fleetville locality may recognise it standing outside the Fleetville Recreation Ground.  Many people today refer to it as Fleetville Park.

One side of the Fleetville milepost which was altered at some point
when the work of two trusts were extended as far as Ware. 

There was nothing particularly special about this, and other mile markers, for, all over the country, there were what were known as Turnpike Roads, generally operated by trusts, and in most cases built by them when not maintained by the parishes through which they passed.  The theory was that turnpike roads would be maintained to a reasonably common standard using funds collected by those who travelled along them according to the distance with their animals and vehicles; not necessarily for every single journey, but sufficiently regularly to encourage income.

You would not recognise the place today but this was how the Peacock PH looked in the mid
19th century.  It is possible the toll payment booth was on the left; travellers leaving
St Albans for Hatfield would pay here, but travel from here across the town was not
chargeable.
COURTESY ST ALBANS MUSEUMS

The road which interests us is the Reading and Hatfield Turnpike for the obvious reason a single Trust was responsible for collecting the fees, or tolls between these two towns.  While it was eventually a legal responsibility for trusts to set up a labelled mile post for each mile of roadway, the number and location of toll charging points did not always compare with the location of mile markers.  In a similar  way we may be charged to travel today by bus or coach a given distance, and it might be for a single journey, a return journey, perhaps with an animal, luggage or child!  There may be no charge at all through the centre of a town – but only by agreement between the borough authority and the road trust; as happened in St Albans.

The letter of the law might prevail to maintain good order, either to ensure travellers are charged correctly, or that travellers do not pass along nearby private land to avoid payment.  Many newspapers carried reports of such contraventions.  There was also reportage of trusts not maintaining their road sections correctly, and the roads might have been just as potholed as they can be today!

This was a tolled road between Colney Heath and the Great North Road; the clue lies
in the name of the farm!
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

The Great North Road, along London Road, for example was an example of one of our Turnpike Roads, although there is now little or no evidence of its 19th century existence.

The building on the left at Horseshoes, now Smallford, protected a gated
road opposite the Three Horseshoes PH.  The gates were removed
shortly before the final tolls were charged in 1890.
COURTESY HERTS ADVERTISER

The Reading and Hatfield , however, still shows evidence of a continuous line of mile markers from Ellenbrook, Popefield, Oaklands, Fleetville, The Peacock PH and St Stephen's Hill.  All others are probably now buried on the spot at the beginning of World War 2 when signs were removed to confuse the enemy if they invaded.  The above remaining examples either evaded removal or were promptly returned when Peace was restored.

The change from Turnpike Trusts (and privately owned sections of roads) to local highway boards and then highway authorities took place nationally over a lengthy period of time; Hatfield Road and St Albans Road East was one of the last in 1890.  We also know that the Fleetville Milepost today is not in its original location, having been moved "along the road" from halfway along Bycullah Terrace when one of its properties was altered to create a new shop frontage.

Along this same stretch of toll road there were also toll collecting  cottages at side road entrances to Camp Road, Sutton Road and Colney Heath Lane, and across the main road at Roe Hyde, Horseshoes (Smallford) and Peacock Public House. Payment tree-commenced at the foot of Holywell Hill for onward travel towards Rickmansworth.

On a new section of the North Orbital road just south of the Hummingbird Junction (the former
Noke Hotel) in the 1930s.  Children are being escorted across the road on their way home
from their new school in Bricket Wood back to Chiswell Green.  Along the verge on the right
is the Noke Lane/Lye Lane white mile marker indicating the presence of mileposts south of
the city before World War Two though none remains today.
COURTESY HERTS ADVERTISER

Many accounts and stories (which may or may not be true) here recorded of travel along the local turnpike; not all of which have satisfactory or true conclusions, including the most commonly repeated suggestions concerning members of the Salisbury family.

Portion of a painting by John Westall showing the Hut Toll gate and house in Colney Heath
Lane near its junction with Hatfield Road.  There is no evidence of it today.

Whatever we do or don't know about the turnpike roads they were all part of our east end local story – including incidents of embezzlement, favouritism, laziness in office, and more.

What life might have been different if payment in the 18th and 19th century could have made using an early day version of a travel Oyster card!

Fleetville is ...

 Yes, Fleetville is busy; the district is crowded and expensive.  If you have children and you would like to enrol your child to one of the schools here you will find buying a home nearby will cost you high prices.  If your home is without a private driveway parking on a nearby roadside can be nigh-on impossible.  For these and other issues Fleetville can also be attractive for all sorts of businesses.  And businesses also need land; they also search for opportunities to land-share in inventive ways.

The style of Hanley's grocery store between Albion Road and The Crown Hotel
in 1904!

When Fleetville was young – the first half of the 20th century – shops were small and, in the main, lined almost a mile-length of Hatfield Road's north side.  Then retail changed; motor trades moved out, the Co-op lead the way in the supermarket stakes – the same site becoming Safeway and later Morrison's – but there seemed no further opportunity for others to move in; supermarkets are land-hungry.  As it was, Morrison's arrived on the site of by far the largest former factory in the form of a printing works followed by a hosiery mill.

The Co-op was first, followed on the same site by Safeway. The yellow egg of
Morrison's grew even larger.

Eyes have firmly centred on what used to be known as factory estates.  Three of them were identified in the late 1930s to help de-factory the inner streets of St Albans.  Porters Wood, previously intended as a cemetery; a roadside strip left from gravel working on Butterwick Farm and renamed Butterwick Wood; and the brick-works site in Ashley Road and now known as Brick Knoll Park.  Notice how all three gained "green" descriptors for what were intended to be industrial processes, or at least businesses for employment on an extensive scale.

Bricks were first made at Brick Knoll Park in 1899 (at least that is when the land exchange
took place); the site was vacated around 1948.

Business have been coming and going ever since; the latest to disappear was the 
Vauxhall car sales; all part of the gradual change.

At Brick Knoll Park access had previously been poor: unmade roads, low and narrow railway bridges and pot-holed by a generation of clay abstraction. Completion of what was then identified as the "ring road" helped to improve access, yet even before that was in place the brickworks site became the corporation's domestic waste depository of the day, the day being the 1940s and 1950s.

The urgent post-war requirement was to locate heavy plant businesses to focus on road building and similar infrastructure schemes for London and site preparations for factories elsewhere.  So this St Albans factory estate played its part.  Remember, there was then no made up Ashley Road south of the branch railway, no Drakes Drive and only minor Hill End Lane (Station Road), Cambridge Road and Hedley Road for heavy vehicles to negotiate.

Leisure has arrived at the site in the form of Battlekart – and a stage school.
COURTESY BATTLEKART

The mature years of Brick Knoll Park developed from the 1960s with a mixture of vehicle-hungry sites such as letter sorting, car repairs and sales, and light engineering.  More recently any business which could be accommodated within an easily erected warehouse became attracted to the location.  So we now seem to have added two leisure addresses: Top Hat Stage School and BattleKart, the latter open for business away-days and weekends for the leisure market.  Howdens, who might have previously been a street side location, have a kitchen and furniture display warehouse at Brick Knoll Park. 

A typical Lidl store.

Now, preparations are proceeding to bring food retailing just inside the gates.  Lidl are to open a supermarket with over 120 car-parking spaces, most being for fast-turnaround occupation, the downside is likely to be increased occupation of the public road space and local junctions which are not possessed with high capacity anyway.  Although there are bus stops along Ashley Road the route 305 buses which use them cannot be defined as frequent and certainly not adequate.

Many churches have put down their roots on factory estates and business parks.

A further opportunity grabbed in the modern era is for church organisations – Christian and others – to acquire existing warehouses for use, especially on Sundays but also weekday evenings, for their meetings and services.  The benefit, of course, is lower land costs and plentiful parking released from daytime business use.  Central locations used to be sought but for the majority of members who have family cars centrality can be a turn-off as non-chargeable parking is rarely available.  To finish on a personal note, a mile long walk from home to church twice each Sunday was a given, our insurance being there was a bus for seriously wet weather!  

Let us hope that Lidl will succeed along Ashley Road.

Barriers ahead

Cover images on Volume one.

 I have often been asked whether I had specific reasons for the choice of photographs displayed on the front covers of both volumes of St Albans' Own East End (published in 2012 and 2013). Almost as frequently has been surprise when I have admitted each image was part of a carefully planned listing rather than a random collection; indeed, almost as much time was taken on the covers as any one of chapters inside.  Each of the two volumes contain 13 or 14 small images on the front and one larger photograph on the back cover – not forgetting three which comprise the logo.

So, I guess I should reveal how each picture earned its place.  Here, then, begins a new series of short blogs, and it would be interesting to discover the proportion of my readers who have not noticed these little collections!

This bridge adjacent to the former Smallford Station, enables road traffic to link Smallford and
Oaklands Lane with Sleapshyde and Colney Heath.

Buses can lose their tops but in this case it is the top – the deck of St Albans' 
Road bridge – which was decapitated in the 1950s to enable tall vehicles,
including double deck buses on the 341  (St Albans and 
Hatfield Town Centre) to take a more direct route.

Many changes might be needed in new town developments, including reconnecting a
link along the former railway track at Wellfield Road.

What single development or project made the greatest impact on the eastern districts at the beginning of the time period covered by the books' chronology.  By the 1870s the new transport of the age – railways – arrived at the eastern districts. The Hatfield and St Albans Railway was sparkly new and connected the full length of St Peter's rural parish from Hatfield Station, already well established as a route to the Capital, and St. Albans Station at the foot of Holywell Hill, now known as Abbey Station.  The latter would enable passengers to travel onwards to Watford and then into central London; and all before St Albans had its own main line station.  Although the railway's impact in terms of the number of passengers carried was modest, the impact on the local landscape was considerable.

This bridge at Sutton Road was removed after closure of the railway and the road levelled – with consequent improvement to drainage along Sutton Road.  A station was proposed for the
site on the right, but never materialised.

The original bridge in Ashley Road was replaced after the railway closure, to offer a
wider roadway on a ring way around St Albans and at the location of a future industrial
estate.

Detailing on one of the huge arches which takes the Midland Railway over the Hatfield-
St Albans' Railways bridge over one of St Albans' major road arteries: London Road.

Along the 6.5 mile routed were five stations or halts, which was considered well-served at the time.  But the overall impact was affected by an infrastructure of fourteen bridges and three surface railway crossings, the former either to carry conflicting roads or lanes over the newly laid railway track, or to enable roadways to pass under the line.  Three examples of level crossings were created; although it would have been possible for the railway to be bridged at a significantly increased cost, such cost would have been largely impracticable. The locations were at Ellenbrook, Hill End and Cottonmill.

Of the thirteen bridges only one takes the railway (now Alban Way) over a river and only one allows pedestrians under the railway. Two bridges, Sutton Road and St Albans Road, were demolished and not replaced after the railway's closure after the 1950s.  Seven structures were replaced, all of them in the years following closure.  In all cases this was to improve the navigation for road vehicles.  Among these were Cottonmill, Camp Road and Ground Lane.

The replaced pedestrian bridge at Ground Lane when new housing developments
enveloped the railway route.
COURTESY KEN WRIGHT

The former Camp Road bridge was eventually replaced by the Blue Bridge nearby the
old Sander Orchid Nursery, when it was intended to open the old railway track bed
as a leisure walk and cycle route.

During the lifetime of the railway it would have been the company's responsibility for ongoing maintenance.  Following closure, responsibility was passed in most cases to the highway authority. For example the Camp Road bridge near Dellfield was willingly torn down to counter the risk to road traffic and little time was lost in carrying out that task.  Once the conversion of the track bed to  a leisure path became a reality special funding was allocated to the bridge replacement. Today's bridge is known as the Blue Bridge.

There had not previously been a bridge over the railway from the de Havilland side
to the new town housing side, until one was included in the new town road plan.  It
lasted around thirty years before being demolished in favour of the Hatfield Tunnel
and the creation of the Galleria shopping centre.  A second attempt at creating a link resulted
 in the present connection to Queensway.

By far the most complex obstructions to be managed were the Midland bridge/viaduct over London Road (the former a Midland structure and the latter a local project; the A1 bridge during the period of the 1930s road-building programme; and the Cavendish Road bridge in a location where no bridge existed while the railway was open but swept over the track and was paid for by the New Town project in the 1950s.  This bridge had the shortest lifespan of all, having been demolished thirty years later when the Hatfield Tunnel was created.

No-one could deny the significance of a small railway in the 1850s in dividing the parish of St Peter so dramatically.  But, as we have seen above the Midland Railway, which finally built its route through St Albans to the Capital, required bridges on a larger scale for its multiple tracks.  In addition to its London Road structure road bridges were required at Victoria Street, Hatfield Road, Sandpit Lane and Sandridge Road; and occupation bridges at York Road and Jennings Road.  All of these, plus their associated stations, made a huge contractural impact on the growing township as well as the rural landscape beyond.  They have also left a permanent impression on the map, the industrial functions of the town, and ensured that the eastern districts grew as industrial communities as much as residential support networks.

We can now tick off the top left image of Volume One's St Albans' Own East End.

Note: Not all bridges are illustrated in this article.

Slimmon, Boyes and Muskett

 Continuing our occasional ambles around the calm and picturesque Hatfield Road Cemetery I have enjoined three farmers whose lives paused in the East End of St Albans.  In fact we could argue we owe much to the men who occupy plots in this quiet place along Hatfield Road.  In close proximity are the graves of three farming families.  We are so used to hearing of food surpluses and the proportion of purchased food which is thrown away, it is difficult to comprehend the on-the-edge existence of 19th century families who relied on their hard labour.  As to the farms themselves there is a world of difference between the farm or landowner, and family the family who worked the farmer – the tenant family.

A slump in the price of grain in the second half of the 19th century meant that landowners were anxious to protect their rents.  They began to engage tenants experienced in dairying.  This attracted a number of farmers from Scotland where dairying was already a significant speciality.

The two drawings in this series were by Jane Marten in the 1820s.  This is of Marshals Wick Farm homestead, also recorded as Wheeler's Farm, but there was no connection with the murderer of tenant farmer Edward Anstee.  Anstee's replacement was James Slimmon.
COURTESY HISTORIC ENGLAND

Improvements in rail transport and nearness to the capital meant there would be a ready market for milk.  But an event occurred in 1880 which forced the hand of landowner George Marten.  In that year a murder was committed at the Marshals Wick farmhouse, when tenant farmer Edward Anstee was brutally murdered by having several dozen bullets fired into his body by an intruder while he was resting in his bedroom,  A man called Thomas Wheeler was arrested, tried and found guilty; a trial in which the details filled even the national papers at the time.

The boldest headstone, in the form of an obelisk, to the life of James Slimmon
close to the Hatfield Road boundary of the Cemetery.

Within a short space of time James Slimmon, his wife Jane and son William arrived at the farm from Dumfries.  Not only was he an experienced dairy farmer but he brought with him new farming practices.  Although he died a few years later, son William, brought up in the same mould as his father, looked for new farming methods and new marketing skills; pioneering new door-to-door milk deliveries twice each day.  He also led the way in getting machinery demonstrations arranged by manufacturers.  William was the last tenant before the land sale to T F Nash for house building from the 1930s

With the demolition of the former Beaumonts Manor House a new tenant homestead took its
place in 1831 and the second farmer to the new building was John Boyes.

Next door arrived John Boyes, also from Scotland, to the tenancy of Beaumonts Farm, only the second to do so since owner Thomas Kinder decided to move out of the Manor House in 1831.  Under Boyes' management the farm remained a mixed unit instead of changing to dairying.  But the skill came in judging the balance between the specialisms in order to keep the farm profitable.  Like Slimmon, Boyes became the last farmer on this land before housing arrived in the form of Camp estate and eventually Beaumonts estate.

Jane Marten pencilled this splendid drawing of Newgates set back from Sandpit Lane nd occupied by the Musket family.
COURTESY HISTORIC ENGLAND

All three farmers are laid to rest in this quarter of Hatfield Road Cemetery.

Of the three farmers celebrated William Muskett was the only man not from Scotland; he was a St Albans man, managing Newgates Farm for over forty years.  Newgates was a tiny unit of less than thirty acres on the north side of Sandpit Lane.  About the size of a school playing field he managed to make a modest living on whatever mix of produce his acreage would allow.  Being more of a subsistence farm rather than a commercial enterprise William's was probably as typical as it is possible to be of many tiny farms and smallholdings in the UK.  He was the penultimate tenant on his little holding for this and other nearby farms were sold for post-war housing needs, and have therefore been lost as a valuable local food resource.  It is our good fortune that other farms have been able to compensate by their greater efficiencies.  And that the rest of us have progressively been able to choose from an increasingly wide range of occupations than agricultural labourers, cowmen and farm hand casuals which would have been inevitable for many of us up to the late 19th century.

So we will raise a glass to the constant battle fought by these tenant farmers and their families.

Roll Them Out

 It is unusual to re-tell the account of a blog post from years back – in this case twelve years.  Indeed you could say it is quite unnecessary given that blogs have their own timelines and/or indexes to enable its readers to return at ease to any post since 2012 in the same way you would open a favourite book at a favourite chapter.

In this case I have returned to 14th July 2013 and a post titled Keeping it Central.  Not only was this a phrase of exasperation frequently used by a dear friend of mine whenever committee meetings had a tendency to wander – as in "Can we please keep this meeting central" i.e. to the point.  But the title of the post in question Keeping it Central referred to the name of a school, opened in Hatfield Road in 1931.  Named Central School; still there but now after several name changes is identified as Fleetville Junior School.

Students from Central School for girls at their premises in Victoria Street in 1921. 

As a girls school it had begun in the early 1920s in shared accommodation in Victoria Street.  Having the opportunity to move to a modern structure in 1931 you might have thought a new name would have been selected, but the identification for the new building remained Central School, which generated some conversations at the time since the establishment was no longer central to St Albans.  It  did still retain selected girls from across the city for their continuing education when most 13 year olds would have left school.  So it remained a central site in that respect.

The focus of the original post was the first photograph taken in that opening year; serried rows of all children and staff.   Ten years earlier there had been a tenth of that number, and as with any number of class photographs, sometimes with a few recalled names on the back, and still referred to in conversations by grown-up children and grand-children.  As I wrote in 2013 about another revealing style which became popular:

"I am referring to those panorama pictures.  Not easy to handle once you get the photo in your hands.  It often ends up permanently rolled  into a scroll and deposited in a remote cupboard."

That virtually guarantees that the image's subjects will fail to see the light of day, and that the prospect of those names of remembered friends will not be recorded because of the inconvenience of annotating the strip of uniformed faces in tidied rows surrounding the head teacher and teachers.  One suspects such photos were often  arranged to satisfy the ego of the head teacher who, of course, sat at the centre of all he/she controlled.

The five segments of Central's 1931 school photo roll (with overlaps to avoid half-faces) are reproduced in www.stalbansowneastend.org.uk 

If you have not previously explored this website - a partner of this blog - among the topics covered is a section on schools which are  embedded in the east end of St Albans.  Here you will find dozens of class and group photos, thankfully with names recorded in many cases, supplied by their donors.  Of course blog readers have also supplied additional friends or relatives via their comments ("my grandpa's in the third row").  And as a result of a little mis-remembering the occasional correction has been received.  

The site reveals 143 images from the following schools: Fleetville, Verulam, Camp, Francis Bacon (now Samuel Ryder), Skyswood, Oakwood, Central, Marshalswick (now Sandringham), Beaumont, Windermere, Colney Heath, Cunningham, Ss Alban & Stephen, and Wheatfields.

When it comes to the names of people we once knew, we are aware that distance from the event is not our friend, and we are better recording names while we are able; it also assists others struggling to recall the same faces.  If you have an image to share and/or add the names of former pupils you can see, please use the website's email address: saoee@me.com