A Walk to the Station

When the idea materialised, of local newspapers bolstering their incomes by extra advertising, many of them hedged and issued their usual end-of-week issues, while introducing a mid-week edition with a limited amount of "lighter" editorial and bulked up by advertising and "advertorials" – advertising features.  This edition they delivered free to your door, or gave away at the local station.

That began in earnest during the 1980s, but wasn't actually new, although the free bit might have been!  The Herts Advertiser regularly produced advertising features on one of its middle pages in the 1930s.

Recently I was directed towards another short-lived mid-week edition of the Herts Advertiser, called Hertfordshire News.  It was published from the end of WW1 until 1922, and appeared to provide extra page space for events taking place outside of St Albans, in the huge swathe of the county then covered by the paper, from Hitchin and Hoddesdon, to Barnet and Berkhamsted.

Smallford Station from the road bridge.  Courtesy Roger Taylor.

I was encouraged to seek the microfilms of the Hertfordshire News for one reason.  In 1920 a report described the retirement of Smallford's stationmaster. Mr Thomas North.  "Approaching 70 years old Mr North even now blames the worry of the war as though it were [sic] necessary to excuse himself the fact that he is retiring."

It appears that Mr North's workload was considerably increased by the billeting of soldiers nearby.  Although it is not more specific, Mrs Fish, the owner of Oaklands House, is known to have handed her home over to the military while she went to live at the town end of Hatfield Road.  In addition to soldiers under training there were many POWs on the estate.

The article states "When Smallford, in common with many other quiet English country places, became the scene of military activity, as many as 20,000 soldiers were being stationed for training in the neighbourhood."

This information, taken together with the apparent "worry" experienced by Mr North during the war, gives us a rather distorted picture.

Twenty-thousand.  That, indeed, is a huge number of passengers being served by a tiny country station, and we may wonder how the single track branch railway coped with the strain, let alone Mr North.  I think the truth is slightly different.  While there may have been around 20,000 soldiers and POWs at Oaklands between 1914 and 1919, that number would not have been there for the full period.  Given that training is unlikely to have taken more than two months, and may have been considerably shorter, it is doubtful whether more than 600 or 700 would have been residing at Oaklands and its outbuildings at any particular time.

The only puzzle might be, why Smallford was used rather than the nearer Hill End Halt.  But then, Smallford did have an extensive assembly point at the yard.  You may have a different idea; or maybe both stations were used!