Getting Noticed

Our enforced change in routines recently has been encouraging us to take more notice of our surroundings while we take our daily exercise walks.  Observations and inquiries have been received on matters such as the lettering on boundary posts, how buildings sit on their plots, the age of trees, houses which stand out, typefaces on street plates, and so on.  

One walker observed a house of post-war red-brick design among a pre-war pebbledash row in Hazelwood Drive.  To be clear, Hazelwood Drive south.  As with many homes in Beechwood Avenue south and all of Woodland Drive south this 1930s development was the preserve of builder A A Welch.  He had completed Woodland Drive south, both sides, and the odds of Hazelwood Drive south, temporarily reserving plots in each road for a work site which today would be called a compound.  A wedge shape at 1 and 3 Woodland Drive and a larger rectangle between 1 and 11 Hazelwood Drive.

Hazelwood Drive south - a post-war house nestles among the Welch-built
1930s homes; a former builders' compound.
COURTESY GOOGLE EARTH

Having completed all of the odds – but just four pairs on the opposite side – Welch began filling his compound with numbers 1, 3, 5 and 7.  That is as far as was possible before all work stopped for the war.  The sideways between the homes were shared, but the owners of 7 and 13 took an early opportunity to negotiate an extra few feet, biting into the remains of the compound intended to be 9 and 11 when they were eventually built.

Aerial phone taken in March 1939.  Hazelwood Drive is extreme right.
Rectangular builders' compound near bottom end with historic oak tree
in top left corner.
COURTESY HISTORIC ENGLAND

In the 1950s both the former compounds were finally sold for building, two houses in Woodland, but only one in Hazelwood, thanks to the narrower site resulting from the earlier land transfers.  So we have a post-war red brick home here as well as almost a complete set of evens which were more modern.  And it also answers the other question which has been posed more than once: why is there no number 11 Hazelwood Drive?

A similar query was raised a while back about house numbering in Beechwood Avenue, for which a certain answer is not clear; and for a development which progressed along the road in sequence, is rather puzzling.  From Beaumont Avenue we have numbers 1 and 3, then 3a and 5, 7 and 9 and so on.  Why was 3a necessary?  The most logical answer might come from the way the first pair face towards the junction instead of parallel with Beechwood Avenue.  It is possible the developer initially intended the first plot to be for a detached house.  The Post Office seems to have been prompt in allocating numbers, perhaps too prompt for a builder whose change of mind resulted in a pair of semis instead.  It would certainly be the reason for the resulting awkward plot boundaries and the need for a 3a in the sequence.  Of course, if there is a different account ...

Junction of Beechwood and Beaumont avenues.  Two former builders'
compounds are in this photo.
COURTESY GOOGLE EARTH

While referring earlier to builders' compounds, H C Janes, which constructed homes on the opposite side of Beechwood and in Elm Drive in the early 1930s, had a compound where number 267 Hatfield Road appeared in the 1960s.  A similar compound had been left in Beaumont Avenue which is today the location of number 2.

All that from a pair of queries resulting from everyday walks!