One for the Album

Those of you who read the blog post Going to the Shop recently will have been reminded that there were several shops at the Sutton Road end of Cambridge Road.

Cambridge Road

It was partly as a result of an interesting community project nearby that the photograph shown in that post came my way.  For the past year a small group of people who live, or have previously lived, in Cambridge Road and Camp View Road, came together to discover more about their roads and the interesting people who have lived there.  I have been taking an interest, not because I have ever lived in Cambridge Road, but because I walked the road almost every day when I was a child, on my way to and from my grandmother's house.

Juliet at her retirement,
from the Herts Advertiser

Just as I was beginning to recall vague details of people I knew of – including the shopkeepers of course – and recalling a particular person who lived in one of those pairs of semi-detached homes on the hill above Maxwell Road, I received an email about the very same person.  For me Miss Juliet Haddon was just someone I knew of who ran a photographer's studio in Victoria Street,  and who happened to live in Cambridge Road,.  But to Nicholas, who emailed me, Miss Haddon was his great aunt.  Her reputation for producing excellent photographic studies, and working closely with her subjects, was widely known and respected.  What Nicholas lacks is examples of her work.

Juliet Haddon

Juliet was born in Clapham, south London, the daughter of a skilled artist.  While living in Cambridge she trained with a firm of studio photographers and then set up her own studio when she moved to St Albans.  Miss Haddon created a studio in part of what is now Addiktion Cycles, number 101 Victoria Street.  There were always examples of her work displayed in the front window space.  She continued to run her business until the age of 75, when he finally decided to 'call it a day'.  The Herts Advertiser ran a feature article in 1976 to celebrate her significant career and her retirement.  Miss Gertrude Juliet Haddon died in 1986.

I am sure there are residents, or former residents, of Cambridge Road, who knew her as a friend.  If you have any recollections of Juliet I would be delighted to know.  And if you have any photographs taken by her which you would be willing to share, Juliet's great nephew would be delighted to see them; I will pass them on.  The email address is, as usual: saoee@me.com