Updating and refreshing

We do it to our homes; we do it with our cars and our wardrobes.  Every so often we also do it with our websites.  Give them a refresh; an improved way to display information on the pages; and more efficient links both to other pages and to other sites.

That is exactly what is happening to www.stalbansowneastend.co.uk during February.  If you have browsed the site recently you will have noticed a mix of the old and the new – and even the new may receive further tweaks during the next few weeks.

In fact, there new topics which should be appearing this Spring, which have never received much attention, yet deserve to.  More news of these at a later date.

There is one page which I return to regularly, mulling over a few of the questions which have been asked by others, or, in an attempt to complete some research or other, I throw out in the hope that solutions may be discovered by others.

For example, the 1911 census enumerates two families living at Horseshoes (now Smallford) and Ellenbrook.  In one household there were two boarders who were employed as a green keeper and golf labourer.  In the other household there were a golf professional and a horse driver at a golf club, which the census describes as the Hatfield Road Links.

The early development was on the right of St Albans Road
West, near The Comet.  Trees now hide where the homes
were.

The dawn of the 20th century was a period of building development along the road to Hatfield.  The grass air strip would shortly be laid on part of the former Harpsfield Hall Farm – Ellenbrook Fields occupies part of this land today.  A row of large detached and semi-detached homes began to line the airfield side of St Albans Road West from opposite Ellenbrook Lane as far as the access road to the police station opposite the Galleria.  Most of the homes didn't last long and none remains today.  Not even in the form of photographs that I have discovered.

The occupiers of these homes were in well-paid jobs: banking, accountancy and other City-based careers.  This was the clientele the developers were anticipating, and on the back of the promise of a large number of similar homes – the rest never materialised – persuaded the Great Northern Railway Company to construct a station at Nast Hyde for residents to make the connection at Hatfield for trains to the City.

The railway company agreed to add a station at Nast Hyde
close to the development. 

A golf club would  be a further social benefit to the residents and was likely to be the kind of facility provided by a developer.  The question, however, remains: where was this club?  We may be confused by the name used in the census: Hatfield Road Links.  If that is meant to be an accurate label of its location, the club had to be west of Smallford crossroads, for that is Hatfield Road.  Should we therefore be looking for a site at Butterwick Farm or Butterwick Wood?

The road becomes St Albans Road West at Wilkins Green, Nast Hyde and Ellenbrook.  Adjacent to the  garden centre was, between the wars, a speedway track, but surely that would have been too small a location for golf links.  Until de Havilland Aircraft Company moved onto the air strip site in the 1930s land not required for the strip would have continued in agricultural use, either Popefield or Harpsfield Hall farms.  But behind those detached homes, could the developer have rented or leased sufficient acres for golf use?  The income from thwacking small white balls around would have provided more profit than many field crops.  But financial success for the golf project would have depended on the developer completing his allocation of expensive homes.

The Selwyn estate was added in the 1930s to the early
unfinished development.

We now appreciate that the First World War intervened, and completion of the work only concluded when the smaller homes of the Selwyn estate arrived in the late 1930s, by which time the aircraft firm had put down roots.  Developers make many promises, but events often intervene and promises become failed dreams.

But a golf club was around St Albans Road west (or Hatfield Road) somewhere, and was in operation – at least four men were employed for the purpose.  So, in addition to discovering  where the club was, we should perhaps discover in whose employ the men were.