Roads Which are Part of Us

September may be the tail end of the outdoor activities season, but it surely is the best time to review what you have achieved during the Spring and Summer months.  As with five summers before 2016, the local history group, Fleetville Diaries, has arranged a number of guided walks around many of the roads in the Fleetville district.  Also part of the programme have been story walks meandering around Hatfield Road Cemetery.

Walks attract a fair number of guests, but fortunately not too many, given the limited amount of standing space at key stops such as junctions and narrow footpaths.  The maximum the organisers can accept for street walks is 25.  One guest's dog has also joined us on several occasions and appears to have taken a keen interest in his surroundings, if not to the speaker.

Wellington Road in c1954

The most recent addition to the programme was walked for the first time this week as an impressive number turned out to discover more about the Camp estate, particularly Cambridge Road.  This is not simply an opportunity to peer into people's front gardens and how they cope with cars and bins.  It is a trace through time, from when the streets were fields with hedges and streams, locked into the annual cycle of producing food for the table.

So is revealed the origins of at least some of the street names (we are still considering Wellington and Beresford roads), the many styles of house design helping us to locate where early gaps were later filled with newer homes.  Being a residential road well back from Hatfield Road's shopping mile, we can marvel at the number of shops which opened here in the first half of the last century; most no longer open for business

Guests are usually given location maps and laminated photographs to compare an earlier scene with the present day.  Such afternoons or evenings are a pleasantly social experiences, where talks become meaningful discussions.  Everyone has something to offer, and everyone goes home with a newly recalled memory or fresh information.

A story walk in the "Laid to Rest" series,
Hatfield Road Cemetery

As for the story walks, the organisers are frequently surprised by the number of guests for which this would be their first venture beyond the splendid main gates.  Among the thousands of burials in such green and peaceful few acres, stories about a small number have been researched and presented.  Of course, most people lead private lives and their stories are unknown to others.  But if we are to include those which Fleetville Diaries members will be working on during the coming winter, there are nearly fifty stories, told a dozen at a time.

Local history comes in many forms and a tramp around the streets is no bad way to discover more about our patch.  After all, these roads, and the people who live or work in them, are part of us, and we are part of that same community.