Anniversaries

June and July are generally busy months for outdoor events and other celebrations.  We hope you can squeeze in a visit next Sunday to Fleetville Rec, where the 2012 Larks in the Parks fun day will be taking place.  As with many other community events, it runs with little funding.  Organisations arrive with their stands, their music, their food and their smiles – and everyone enjoys themselves.  Fleetville Diaries will be present; as will the author of St Albans' Own East End, Mike Neighbour.  Copies of the book will be on sale, as well as a photo exhibition: Green East End.  Diaries' exhibition The Best Days of Our Lives will also be there.

A number of young families at Elm Drive in May 1945.

An outdoor event held 67 years ago in Elm Drive is now featured on the website.  Jenny has sent in photographs of the Elm Drive street party in 1945, celebrating VE Day.  The growing collection of group photos probably proves just how engaging they are, with so many faces to try and remember.  So, if any blog readers have group pictures of any kind – together with any names if that is possible – do get in touch.

Fifty years ago the city council finally completed the land purchases necessary to compete the ring road.  The Ashley Road railway bridge had to be replaced and the pot-holed track that is now Ashley Road made into a proper road.  Finally, former farmland between Cambridge Road and Drakes Drive would become the final link.  Considering that the council was talking about its "circle road" in the early 1920s, forty years to build a road seems some long-drawn-out achievement!

While on anniversaries, here is a minor one, though important to residents at the time.  A spare plot on the corner of Ridgeway and Briar Road was destined to become a block of flats in 1961.  The planning authority did not like the idea, and neither did the nearby residents already occupying their new homes. Without too much fuss, the plan for flats was dispensed with, and maisonettes were constructed instead.

And get ready for the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Baton public house.  Although not built where originally intended in Marshalswick Lane, permission was agreed for a Ridgeway location at The Quadrant.  Until the Baton opened the nearest inns were King William, the Bunch of Cherries and the Rats' Castle.  Cheers!