Thoroughly British restaurant

The land which St Albans City Council acquired after the Grimston Road prison had remained empty for some years, included, not only the buildings but some open space surrounding it.  In 1930 the Parks Department had made good use of it, presumably as a nursery.

Since the Council had committed to rehousing a number of families from sub-standard properties in the city, it intended to build 54 houses in a new road, Shirley Road.  This number would have fitted nicely into the looped road proposed, except that the Parks Department objected to the loss of its space.  As a compromise, it was left with a parcel of land on the west side and 37 homes went up instead of 54.

During the Second World War the Council operated a very effective British Restaurant (later renamed Civic Restaurant) at the former Market Hall, which was behind BHS in St Peter's Street.  A two-course meal plus drink could be purchased for one shilling (5p) without producing your ration book.

Newspaper photocopy of the former Shirley Road Civic Restaurant.
Courtesy HERTS ADVERTISER

So successful was this venture that a second restaurant was planned, but the only suitable land the council claimed to have available  was the Parks Department nursery in Shirley Road.  So a concrete sectional building was erected in 1948, and at times it was busier than the Market Hall.   I can recall my mother taking me to the Market Hall restaurant, probably on Wednesdays, which helped spread the family's ration books values slightly more generously.  It is possible that one or both of the restaurants also served school dinners where no other facilities were available.

If you visit Shirley Road today you will discover no building; the land has been turned into a car park serving the developments along Charrington Place.  And because I had never retained a recollection of what the restaurant building had looked like – probably never saw it – I sent a call out for photographs.  There may have been a very good reason for the nil response, as the structure was not exactly a glamorous building.  Just a plain utility concrete, flat-roofed box.

The Herts Advertiser, though, came to the rescue, as an article in a 1973 issue included a photograph (above). The resulting photocopy makes it look rather worse than I described it!  I will attempt to obtain a rather better version.

The site today is a car park serving Charrington Place.

The Mayor in 1948 declared that the building was a "very handsome building".  Yes, well, that's what mayors are supposed to say.  Maybe the residents of Shirley Road had a view on the matter, since some of them also had a view of the building.

Eventually, the restaurant closed and it was put to other uses.  It became an annexe to the St Albans School of Art when the premises were in Victoria Street.  Eager to vacate to its new premises in Hatfield Road the restaurant lay empty  and was then leased to the Hertfordshire Association for the Physically Handicapped, as it was then known.  The workshop facilities provided valuable skills in workplace-type workshop environments.  Although the building was then in poor condition, no doubt its value was with the activity going on inside it.

The only remaining searches are, for an approximate date then the workshop removed to another location, and when the building was finally demolished.  Did it really last until the recent office developments?  Surely not.