An anniversary for Glenferrie

In the late 1890s St Peter's Farm (farm homestead building extant as the Conservative Club) was sold and broken up.  This was the move which linked suburban St Albans at Stanhope Road to the Smith-inspired Fleet Ville at Bycullah Terrace.  Two of the three fields which lined the north side of Hatfield Road were purchased by Horace Slade, the straw hat and cardboard box manufacturer.  The ensuing residential development which then took place on what became known as the Slade Building Estate, was nothing short of remarkable for the period and the structure of the building industry's reliance on many independent small firms.  



Glenferrie Road, the furthest west of the three parallel roads Slade laid out, managed completion within five years of the road being carved out of the field previously known as Great Long Field.  Occupation of the homes shows evidence of an orderly construction plan, and the resulting design of dwellings suggest that two or three small developers engaged the varied construction firms to build a tidy arrangement of terraces (on the east) and semi-detached houses (on the west side).  No doubt current residents still clutching their original deeds will be able to discover who their developers were and perhaps work out what roles in St Albans' society they otherwise held.

Unlike many other roads, development was tidily arranged too, beginning from the Hatfield Road end.  On the west side we walk along the full length of what were the rear gardens of the houses in Hatfield Road – most had originally been built for domestic accommodation, while the same distance on the east side was reserved for the Methodist church's third home once it had raised sufficient funds.

The welcome sight of extensive green in the rear gardens
COURTESY GOOGLE EARTH

The two long terraces on the east side have retained their original exterior look without disturbance to glazing or other modernisations.  The second terrace, which contains more constructional decoration than the first even sports original decorated tile front paths in one adjacent pair.

The west begins with four pairs of attractively simple homes, possessing several echoes of the terrace opposite.  These give way to pairs with front bays, eaves and an interestingly simple design above the adjacent front doors, signifying the location of a porch without actually building one.  And no-one has since!

Surviving street directories suggest that the final initial occupants moved into the remaining new homes on the west side in 1907, making Glenferrie Road officially complete one hundred years ago this year.

A pre-WW1 photograph of Glenferrie Road looking distinctly wider
without its lines of parked cars.  COURTESY ANDY LAWRENCE

In the most recent census available to us in 1911, when the road was very fresh, there were no fewer than five heads of household working in the printing industry and several working for the railway.  A smattering of clerks, managers, accountants, were joined by the very new roles of electricians, a coal merchant, baker,  prison warder and an employee in a raincoat factory.  The range of occupations today is undoubtedly just as wide, but there are more occupations per household now, compared with the early 20th century.  With that comes an increase in disposable income per household; and the one external difference which has transformed almost every address in the road is the continuous line of parked cars along both kerbs.

But one view which almost no-one notices, unless they are using Google Earth is the unbelievable amount of green space – in the rear gardens of course; this in a part of St Albans which appears to be devoid of the colour apart from in the Cemetery and the Recreation Ground.

A happy centenary to all residents of Glenferrie Road and their families.