COVER PICTURES 6

 The name's Nicholson – Alfred John Nicholson

The very first factories to open in the wider Fleetville were all the largest entities where the growing district swept up plenty of potential employees and helped create a relatively prosperous suburb, even though the remuneration rates were at times far from generous.

The Sutton Road factory when it had a front garden.

The frontage looks the same today, fifty years after closure, the benefit of protection under the
listing process.  Behind the frontage are now private residences.

The factory's front door at 3 Sutton Road still looks much the same,

Getting to work was once a challenge after heavy rains when the dip below the rail bridge 
created what was known as the "Sutton Lakes".

The third factory to arrive – from Manchester – was a raincoat factory, although its product range widened as the factory settled into its home at Sutton Road.  Negotiating this road was far from easy, with a very low railway over bridge and frequent flooding resulting from digging into the water table to enable sufficient vehicle height.  Although rail access to the factory was enabled less use was made of the tracks, or rather track, for it was only a single track railway.

Alfred's Manchester career began with the trading of woollen cloth and then the development of a lightweight waterproof fabric.  The move to St Albans came about through his clients' bespoke requirements; many of them living in London.  St Albans was close enough to the Capital and the cost of land further removed from the heart of London brought the unit costs within range.

Copies of a large number of original designs from the company have been retained
by St Albans Museums.
COURTESY ST ALBANS MUSEUMS

Early advertising in the brochure of St Albans' 1907 Pageant which was
printed next door at T E Smith's Fleet Printing Works.

Advertising in the national press in the brochures of the Festival of Britain
South Bank Exhibition in 1951.

Nicholson acquired sufficient land for the factory as well as additional potential sites alongside the railway which he intended to sell on to other employers and thus ensure the railway operated successfully – and to his benefit; although these developments were slow to mature, and were not as productive as he would have liked, resulting in Hedley Road today largely being a continuous row  of residencies today.

However, land Nicholson acquired in Salisbury Avenue bore greater fruit.

Residents today may have wondered about the naming of Hedley Road along which much Nicholson activity developed, including housing for early employees. William Hedley Kenelm Nicholson was AJ's only son.  The family lived in homes, successively in Clarence Road, Lemsford Road and Hall Place Gardens.  He became a parish councillor, a rural district councillor, and once St Albans City expanded to enclose Fleetville, the home of his factory, he ensured his factory was appropriately represented by being a representative on the new body.

Nicholson ensured residents could meet in his factory to discuss local issues, there being no other public room. Apart from political meetings for the Liberal cause, early parent pressure meetings included the urgent need for a school in the vicinity; until 1908 the only school in the new district was the Camp Elementary School.

St Albans' residents became familiar with the Nicholson factory in Sutton Road, but many are surprised by the existence of a second works in Swindon, and further works in Reading and Cape Town.  Through two wars and healthy competition Nicholson's traded successfully for seventy-two years, at times benefiting  from large quantity orders and government contracts.

Nicholson was not the only successful garment company succeeding from special contracts, for Chester Barrie purchased the Nicholson company and its works in the 1970s – just one of a succession of modern amalgamations and takeovers, the latest of which, recently, was Chester Barrie itself.

But the company of Alfred J Nicholson was no doubt proud that its founder helped to give birth to Fleetville, even though it was the firm on the other side of the road, T E Smith printing, which gave the district its name.  That is the reason for its inclusion on the front cover of St Albans' Own East End, Volume One.

Remembering the date

 May 8th 1945                                May 9th 1945

Victory in Europe Day                  Liberation Day

Ever since 1945 annual celebrations have taken place across Britain and the Channel Islands following the sudden relief felt by most people alive at the time.  Huge happiness for the future had arrived; great sorrow as they remembered family members were lost during the Second World War; and tired relief even though some of the difficult times still lay ahead.

In special years commemorations were held in 1950, 1970, then 1985. As the key years lay behind us, and more of us forgot the date until too late, we were beginning to realise for an increasing number of young people the year 1945 and the date 8th May meant little or nothing to them.  Not only had they not been born in 1945, an increasing number of their parents weren't around then either.  More families weren't in a position to talk about the events.  The question turned from being "what did you do in the war dad/grandad?" to "Did anyone in our family know anything about the war?" to "What was this 1945 thing?"

Probably not surprising; after all, no-one today remembers celebrations at the end of 19th century wars and battles, nor even the First World War.

But in St Albans the Herts Advertiser did their best.  All the printing was in black and white on very poor quality paper.  The skills required to produce quality photographs were just not there yet, as you will see in these re-prints below.  In 1945 everyone knew the name of the Mayor (it was Mr William Bird, whose house was in Beaumont  Avenue at the time).  Masses of uniformed (mainly) men standing guard outside the Town Hall with crowds of residents gathered behind.  The jubilation was guarded and restrained.

May 8th 1945 in Market Square; Mayor William Bird gave a formal speech.
COURTESY THE HERTS ADVERTISER

But the fun came in the suburbs with a certain amount of dressing up and instant drama along the streets; everyone seemed to let down their hair.

COURTESY THE HERTS ADVERTISER

In parts of our district families hailing from Guernsey had been living here, having left their island (and from Jersey) just days before the enemy began its occupation of the islands.  So when 8th May arrived and the surrender signed off it was not until the following day, the 9th, that "our dear Channel Islands" could be freed.  So in Britain the date was known as Victory in Europe Day (VE), because that is what it was – though there was a lot more still to do – and tomorrow the Channel Islands will be commemorating Liberation Day, because that is what it was for the islanders.

In Liberation Square, St Helier, Jersey they selected something altogether more permanent in Philip
Jackson's highly symbolic sculpture.  Islanders are daily reminded of their return to freedom.

Islanders in Guernsey carry their reminder of freedom daily in their pockets.

So, friends and families, wherever we are, we'll hopefully have conversations, not just today and tomorrow, but every 8th and 9th May.

Cover Pictures 5

The former T E Smith printing works, Hatfield Road

 We could hardly publish a book all about the city's east end and its best known local area, Fleetville, and not include a photograph of the printing works one mile out of the town's centre.  After all, the building was known as the Fleet Works, and gave its name to the new development around it.  The Fleet refers to the river (sadly below ground and incorporated into an ancient drainage network) and the well known printers' street close to where the owner's home printing factory was based.  The gentleman in question was Thomas E Smith, who brought a significantly larger works to St Albans as colour printing became popular.  Space-hungry colour print works were often built on the outskirts of towns where land costs are lower.

We should add, Thomas Smith's works was not the first to open here; two years earlier another Smith, Orford Smith, began his fine quality  colour works nearby in what was then known as The Camp Fields. Later, the Salvation Army took over the site and it became Campfield Press – but that is another story.  

The T E Smith Colour Printing Agency as shown in the company's own advertising pages inserted into
a publication it had printed in 1907.  The inset illustrated the firm's headquarter building near Fleet
Street where, at the time, most of the country's national newspapers were published and
printed.

The road outside the factory c1914.  Many of the people shown are likely to have been
leaving their shift, walking and cycling along a Hatfield Road devoid of motor traffic.

The red brick factory following the closure of Ballito hosiery mill in the 1960s

All of the currently known and publicly available photographs of the Hatfield Road building were taken by, or for, Smith's themselves and  appeared in a large brochure/programme produced in 1907 for the 1907 Pageant at Verulamium – more than two decades before it became a public park.  Smith's was commissioned to undertake the publication, and naturally it wished to undertake a little publicity for itself.

Thomas Smith, however, was only able to acquire the land because its owners, a partnership between Earl Verulam and the Trustees of St Albans School, required funds to expand the school estate at and around the Gateway.  This expansion was the flint block we see today  adjacent to the Gateway itself.  The Fleet Ville grew on the two arable fields on which the factory was built on the south side and a further field for shops, homes and an institute on the north side of Hatfield Road.

Early photographs of a selection of printing processes within the building c1907. Here a 
rotary press is surrounded by drums of lined up nearby for the work to be done.

One of the machine rooms in the huge compartmented space, designed to limit the damaging
effect of fire.  The company operated its own fire brigade and also gave assistance to the 
neighbourhood of Fleetville.

The backbone of any printer was what was known as jobbing work – a steady stream of small scale
work requiring basic machinery or tools for the production of small quantities of leaflets, forms,
letterheads and so on.

One of the finishing departments was the bindery where multi-page documents are formed into
pamphlets or books.

As with so many commercial enterprises, Smith's was caught up in the manpower and materials issues of the First World War, and although it managed to keep going until 1916 its skilled staff were called to the front, work for the firm was seriously depleted, and the government had a serious requirement for wartime factory space.  The expansive factory was turned over to secret submarine optical research work.

At the end of the war the now government-owned property permitted  Howard Grubb to turn its attention to telescope design and manufacture, which it did until 1925 when it was absorbed into the larger enterprise of Parsons in Newcastle.

Almost immediately two American brothers who had been looking to expand the manufacture of ladies' silk stockings into the UK in order to bypass the heavy import taxes on a number of luxury goods, spied the newly empty building in Fleetville.  The former print and then optical works was acquired and converted into the Ballington Hosiery Mill.  Ballington was the name of the original Tennessee cotton mills, and the name was adjusted to become the brand for the products manufactured in Fleetville: Ballito.  It continued in Peace, War and Peace again until forcibly closed by its new owner, Courtaulds, in 1965.  Although as Ballito new buildings were added post World War Two, three successful businesses thrived in the original 1997 buildings for nearly seventy years before the site was cleared for the St Albans Co-operative Society's centralised supermarket in their own building.

Hundreds of employees were engaged in printing, engineering and hosiery during those times, and brought prosperity to both the city and especially its east end.

Album Mysteries

 It would seem to be an appropriate opportunity to bolt on one or more other searches while we may be trying to find that elusive photograph described in the monthly series titled Rescue Mission.  This is intended to identify locations in St Albans which are recalled by memory, event or by association, but for which there appears to  remain no known images.  As you may have read recently the three locations already highlighted have been the former Sear & Carter Nursery at Smallford (now Notcutts), the Former Co-operative supermarket in Fleetville (now replaced by Morrison's) and the former James Halsey Sawmills (now replaced by commercial buildings along Acrewood Way between Oaklands and Smallford).

While we are carrying out "shoebox searches" containing our own, our parents' or our grandparents' photographs, we could be carrying out other searches at the same time – which might be exciting!  Particularly, looking for those mystery images that have seemingly always formed part of our family collections but where the people or places shown are unknown to us but might have meant something to our relatives from an earlier generation or two. Here are three examples, only the first of which I have solved – solved because I am related to the young people featured above.  It was only relatively recently that I had taken photographs on top of an old building and was able to compare the graffiti scarred into the walls in c1930 with what I can see today; although today's graffiti is far more busy on the picture I had taken in 2012.   Yes, I had been, as my aunts had been, at the top of the Clock Tower in St Albans.

I found the second image far more challenging.  I guessed this photo had been taken in the early stages of World War Two, which would connect with the beginnings of my parents' photo album when they were first married in 1939.  Was this a unit undergoing military training?   My parents are likely to have known at least one of these men, but what about the building?  Was it a former school taken over for the duration of the war?  Perhaps it was a temporary barracks, or a police headquarters – note the typical light fitting above the doorway.  I suspect we would need to have retained a memory of the building even if that building has since been replaced.  It might have assisted if details had been written on the reverse – how many times have we mentioned that? – but no helpful information was found.  I suppose it could be anywhere and probably nowhere near St Albans; but you never know.

It had taken me decades to work out the location of the final image above, which appear to be a row of timber buildings with veranda ends.  It was only after I had worked with a another relative that I began to understand the career and marriage of an uncle whose engineering apprenticeship had been in central London, followed by a long-term contract for the Army at a Royal Air Force base – and  marriage to a WRAF soon after moving to the place of work (above) in Uxbridge.  A pencil marking on the reverse of the image indicated Bungalow number 141 (MQ), St Andrews Gate, RAF Uxbridge.  This is where he and his new wife were entitled to be domiciled at RAF Uxbridge from 1943.  As a civilian attachment they were entitled to accommodation in these Married Quarters, and I had been familiar with this location since a very young child but had no idea in the world where that was.

So three mystery photos, two of which I have researched some identification, and only one, the final picture) am I in a position to assist someone else, if needed, and that someone else could be you!

James Halsey Sawmills

 Last month I began a new series of posts under the name Rescue Mission, where frequent searching over a period of time has failed to locate buildings, sites or events, where photographic evidence appeared to have been lost, if indeed it was present in the first place.  In March I began with the nurseries of Sear & Carter at Smallford, today seen only in a 1946 aerial photograph.  Today Notcutts occupies  the site.  On the site now known as Morrison's, the first supermarket following the closure of Ballito Hosiery Mill was the Co-operative in a smaller and quite different building from the more expansive Safeway retail building that Morrison's now uses.

James Halsey Sawmills

Today, I wish to explore an early building on the Butterwick land  between Oaklands and Smallford.  Today the location it is variously termed an industrial estate although its occupants also include retail and services, including churches.  You will find it called Butterwick Wood, Lyon Way, Acrewood Way, Pearce's; Alban Point, even the Ballito Sports Ground and the "Banana place/meat store!" – though that was sixty and eighty years ago!

Butterwick Wood as is was represented on the Ordnance Survey map of 1939.  The limit of
Hatfield Road houses is to the left, and Smallford Brook is a thin line on the right edge.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

The extent of Butterwick Trading Estate in 2016.
COURTESY HISTORIC ENGLAND

One of the earliest occupiers of what had still been part of Butterwick Farm was a saw mill – possibly a convenient location since the majority of land between Hatfield Road and the branch railway (now Alban Way) was woodland, much of which would eventually be replaced by industrial buildings displaced from the central parts of St Albans; and, as it turns out, locations in Hatfield, which is where the timber firm of James Halsey comes into the account.

Butterwick was one of four zones identified by St Albans for future use as industrial zones – the others being Porters Wood, Ashley Road and Napsbury Lane.  The earliest occupants of Butterwick were Frankipile, Lacre, Pearce Waste, followed by Smallford Planters, but James Halsey was undoubtedly the first being established there in the 1930s, possibly even earlier.  The second largest structure was a government building completed c 1939 for the storage of chilled meats and later converted for the ripening of bananas.

Butterwick Wood from 1939. Industrial usage had already begun to east away at some of the
woodland by the early post-war period.
COURTESY HISTORIC ENGLAND

A number of meat cold stores were constructed in the 1930s, all virtually identical.  This one was from Goldsborough, but the one in St Albans was connected to the branch railway (now Alban Way).
Now the site is replaced by Alban Point, at the western end of Butterwick, and close to the
original track to the former Butterwick Farm
COURTESY NICK CATFORD

As far as I can tell its location was where today's Tool Station and Halfords are, together with the Stevenson's clothing site.  It would be great to raise the name of James Halsey once more and show where it used to be among the trees of Butterwick Wood, then significantly larger than the woodland remaining beside Hatfield Road today.

Cover Pictures 4

When designing the front cover of a book we could reduce it to the essentials: the chosen title and the name of the person or people responsible for writing or editing the book.  However, an illustration brings an extra dimension of promise to the reader, So a montage of drawings or photographs demonstrates the breadth of content within the covers.

We have this month reached the end of the top row: the chapel which lies within the Hatfield Road Cemetery.  Only one other building lies behind the front wall: the Superintendent's house by the front gate.  As an aside, there is more modern accommodation which functions as the administration centre for the city's burial grounds.

The cemetery came about because the council at the time – around 1880 – inquired of the four parishes whether they had sufficient available burial plots in their churchyards.  Three reported various levels of shortage from modest to critical; only one, St Peter's, stated it  owned  a number of potential grave plots.  The  proposed cemetery which would result from the survey perversely ended up being located in St Peter's itself,  just outside the borough boundary in Hatfield Road.

Hatfield Road crosses the top of the photograph left-to-right.  The chapel is circled in yellow.

Although the design of the cemetery layout was quite typical of the time and would have been very attractive, only the Hatfield Road end conformed to what had been proposed.  For cost reasons you might not be surprised to hear, including the apparent need to continue  harvesting a crop until the space was required for burials, the stop-start laying out of the site resulted in the abandonment of the original design.

But the chapel survived.  It is believed this building was under threat from the beginning as questions were asked of the church authorities.  Do we really need a chapel, or two?  But the chapel went ahead, and the cost cutting went instead on retaining the stonework boundary wall only at the front; all other boundaries were downgraded to fencing.

As far as is known the chapel has received only one internal refresh during its time, and that was in 1945.  Bishop Bernard Heywood's dedication to cemetery chapels which he often labelled "drab and dreary" was well-known, with the result that most people preferred to hold the first part of a funeral service at a local church. The Bishop wanted cemetery chapels to be beautiful, suggesting the beauty of the Christian belief in the life to come.

The result at Hatfield Road was a light and bright paintwork theme and a more modern design to the alter piece.  The outstanding architectural feature of the original building being the richly colourful windows.  However, that refresh was now 81 years ago!

The Herts Advertiser gave space occasionally to the burial events of well-known and well-regarded citizens of the time.  The photographer present took an impressive picture of man hundreds of mourners who had walked along the road from other parts of the town to pay their respects to the now departed citizen.  The dominant feature of these images was always the chapel.  It was irrelevant that the little building was unable to accommodate the crowds, but these people surrounded the chapel, held it tight within the crowd's collective arms in a measure of protection and support for the family grieving.

There are few buildings within our east end which went up to represent the people who live in its vicinity.  The exception would have been the fine St Paul's Church on the opposite site of the road.  But when the chapel first appeared, St Paul's was nearly fifty years in the future.

The chapel is still in use, although these days as much for film shoots and recordings as for services of committal.  It is, however, a comforting building in a setting very much appreciated by visitors who arrive for the tranquility of a short time within the parkland-style setting. 

Invisible Streams

 We might have been featuring today's blog within the series of features for which there are no known surviving photographs.  The topic of invisible streams in our East End has been aired previously during the past twelve years; and strictly writing there two streams still flowing between Oaklands and Ellenbrook – evidence is in these first two photographs taken recently.

Extant stream Boggy Mead crosses Hatfield Road at the eastern end of Oaklands.

Extant stream the Ellen Brook crosses under Hatfield Road
at Ellenbrook.

But today I am featuring one former stream for which there is no present day evidence – and I am not referring to the often-mentioned stream which once flowed across today's Eaton Road, as can still be evidenced after long periods of heavy rain.  I am, though, able to show a map on which has been drawn a moat (in blue) which once surrounded a medieval house – which we definitely haven't seen.  This location I have also referenced previously at the corner of Woodland Drive south and Central Drive, the location of Beaumonts Manor.

The road crossing the map left-right is Central Drive. The former moat is 
coloured blue with an engineered channel, also in blue, and was dug from the
moat towards a former manor house.  Woodland Drive has been built
over the left arm of the moat.

The moat cannot have existed without a source to replenish it on occasions.  So, where did the water come from?  The map suggested there seemed to be a spring at the Elm Drive end of Woodland Drive.  In the same way as the rivers Colne and Ver were, centuries ago, more significant water courses compared with their present capacities, and since streams and rivers in our area are reliant on the storage of water in what are known as aquifers within the underlying chalk, The more stored water in the aquifer the closer it reaches the ground surface. And when it does so, especially on a gradient, the water emerges, perhaps only as a trickle, but still it naturally finds its way down hill.

Taking a walk with a camera (or your smartphone) soon reveals where there are gradients along our roads and pavements, and it is not difficult to discover where the highest ground is. Surrounding this point we may once have found sufficient water in the ground for it to dribble out onto the surface in a useful quanta for people to use.

Elm Drive appears to be the highest level, forming a wide flattened dome.  The following images identify the local gradients, and early 19th century maps provide a little extra evidence.  More of that shortly.

a. Stand at Central Drive and look eastwards towards Elm Drive; the gradient is uphill.

The camera is beside the former moat and facing uphill towards Elm Drive.

b. From Beechwood Avenue face Elm Drive; the immediate gradient is up hill.

The camera is at Beechwood Avenue at its junction with Elm Drive.  The rising
gradient in Elm Drive levels out when the distant cars are reached.  This is the
junction with Woodland Drive.

c.  From Hatfield Road at the junction with Beaumont Avenue; once again the view along Hatfield Road toward Oaklands is uphill before levelling out as we would pass Elm Drive behind the Hatfield Road houses on our left.

At this point the camera is facing east from the junction with Beechwood Avenue.
Although gradients don't look significant in this series of photos, but only a
gentle gradient is enough to keep water flowing.

d.  Walk to the Oaklands end of Hatfield Road and note the gradient looking west from the Wynchlands shops; once more the gradient levels out.

Having passed Oakwood Drive, Hatfield Road drops in gradient as it passes the Speckled 
Hen PH and Wynchlands shops on its way eastwards.

e. The higher ground southwards from our starting point continues and appears to change as Ashley Road crosses Camp Road and becomes Drakes Drive.  We have often discovered that as the road gradient descends, heavy rains cause surface water to collect and requires mediation to improve the run-off.  But here we are some way from Elm Drive where we began.

From Hatfield Road and the length of Ashley Road, the road falls in level after a short
distance of Drakes Drive.  This is where standing water can occasionally be found.

f. Along Ashley road we passed Brick Knoll Park where the former brick works were located.  Here the chalk was capped by a layer of clay, and two fields, part of Beaumonts Farm, were named Hither Bridge Field and Further Bridge Field.  So a bridge of some kind was undoubtedly formed across wet ground. 

On the right were former brick works standing on clay above the chalk.  As earlier farming
land there were two fields with names referring to a bridge.  Why would a bridge
have been required?  Water dribbling from the fields made its way along and downhill at
Cambridge Road, then Campfield Road, eventually to a confluence with the river Ver.

Various commentaries have suggested the trickles (though not sure how much water makes a trickle) created a semi-permanent flow down today's Cambridge Road and Sutton Road before joining the stream already flowing, whether permanently or seasonally, along  Campfield Road, avoiding Camp Hill and crossing through Dellfield and via London Road towards river Ver.  It is also likely to have been joined by a stream following to it from Camp Road, forming a small network of waterways all confluencing at the Ver.

Remember the first question I posed?  How did the medieval house at Beaumonts Farm receive the water to fill the moat, keep it replenished, as well as provide water for domestic use and farming activity?  In chalk country nature stores our water for us, so long as we use less water than the underground chalk can store.  Our consumption is of course significantly greater today; and probably offers us lower rainfall.  Most of our streams are therefore invisible.