Postcard pictures

I have not mentioned the topic before on this blog, but I would like to make amends now.  The collection of old postcard views held by Andy Lawrence is impressively large.  He has published them on Flickr.com for all to see.  A sizeable proportion of his St Albans' finds are of the usual subjects: the Cathedral, Verulamium, St Peter's Street and other parts of the Cathedral Quarter.  There are also some wonderful scenes from Harpenden and the villages around St Albans.

Many postcard photos of the east side of St Albans, which were taken between WW1 and WW2, have appeared in local history books, including, of course, St Albans' Own East End.  There are, for example, four different views of Beaumont Avenue when it was still a private, gated and tree-lined lane.  Others were taken at various points along Hatfield Road, no doubt with the prospect of many sales!

However, I have often pondered why no postcard photo has surfaced of what is now Marshals Drive.  If views were taken of picturesque Beaumont Avenue, were they also taken of equally-private Marshals Drive?  The drive, before development, would have remained, presumably much like the Avenue, although its route was slightly different from the wide road we now have.  No postcard photos either, of the old house, vacated by the Martens and eventually sold off for demolition in the 1920s.  But there is a good selection of English Heritage photos in the St Albans' Museums' book on Marshalswick.

Even after the first few houses were constructed in the early 1930s and the new road line created, it was not as wide as today's road.  The council later claimed 6 feet of the existing frontages for the purpose of making a wider traffic route, which it intended as part of the ring road.  Have any photographs of the early development of Marshals Drive survived, or photos of the North Lodge, now 'islanded' between Marshalswick Lane and the stub of Marshals Drive at the railway end?  Or South Lodge at the junction of Marshalswick Lane and Jersey Lane?

If the postcard companies did not think to photograph the drive of Marshals Wick House, perhaps there might be pictures in private collections.  For example, a picture was taken of Alice and George Cooper Brooks outside their house, the right property of Newgates Cottages in Sandpit Lane.  This photo, taken in 1912, will appear on the main website in due course, and has been donated by the family of William Muskett, a former tenant of Newgates Farm.  To my knowledge, this great photo has not previously been seen.

You never know what might be in your photo shoebox or album!