The Place on The Hill

Camp Hill, from a 19th century painting by John
Buckingham.  Courtesy St Albans' Museums

Camp Hill.  That's the historical name given to the former isolated community along Camp Road between Campfield Road and Cell Barnes Lane.  If you began your eighteenth century journey on foot from Hatfield Road, you would take a gentle downhill path as far as the chalk pits at today's Dellfield, you would need to summon strength to then climb the steeper side of the valley to the cottages and workshops on the level ground at the top.   The reason for this topographical exercise is the crossing of a small stream in time past, though quite when this ceased to flow on the surface is unclear.

The reason for your journey might be to return to your home on the Hill, or to one of the distant farms at Hill End, Tyttenhanger Green, Cell Barnes or Beastneys.   There would be no other likely reason for taking this route, and to confirm such remoteness the lane east of Cell Barnes Lane would be narrow and winding, which would funnel farm workers leading cattle and sheep between the pastures and cropped fields on each side.

Before leaving The Hill we might have paused for a drink and a chat at the Old Camp Beer House, on land now occupied by Baker's Close, the pub today having moved several hundred yards eastwards.  Opposite the beer house a horse and cart might be waiting in a short lay-by, giving way to a cart making its exhausting way uphill below the tree canopied and narrow lane.

This is how the road between The Hill and Hill End would have appeared until the sale of Beaumonts Farm on the north side in 1899 and the subsequent growth of a large housing estate, the Camp estate, on its fields – no-one seemed to talk about the Green Belt then and there were no letters of complaint about the eating up of the countryside in the Herts Advertiser; only the perennial topic of mud and puddles, and pitch-black streets.

During the succeeding century or so has developed a community which deserves to be better known and understood.  The layout mirrors Fleetville's Slade estate between Brampton Road and Hatfield Road.  Camp Road – still called Camp Lane until the 1930s – although a little wider today, has not lost its curves and twists of earlier centuries, most notoriously at the Beresford bend.

Fleetville Diaries, the local history group for greater Fleetville, has brought together 45 photographs for an exhibition, now showing at the Museum of St Albans.  Each enlarged picture is accompanied by a narrative, describing its context in the story of Camp, or The Camp, by which it is sometimes referred.

The full title of the exhibition: Camp: the Place on The Hill, Where the Militia Trained, refers to the original community's alleged origins.  When various militias were raised during the 17th and 18th centuries this was an area of temporary encampments set up specifically for training the would-be combatants.  The last time land here was used for such a purpose was in the First World War.  Thereafter land south of Camp Road was opened up for allotments, the other, more peaceable activity Camp district has been known for.

Camp: the Place on The Hill Where the Militia Trained is showing at the Community Gallery, the Museum of St Albans, until Sunday 31st January.  The Museum is open every day from 10 am to 5 pm (2 pm to 5 pm on Sundays).  Entry is free.