Laurel

The ladder roads on the north side of Hatfield Road, those between Harlesden and Blandford, are well-recalled by name, but there one other less well remembered street, although it leads nowhere except the ends of one or two Clarence Road rear gardens.  This is Laurel Road, one of those development roads which was intended to squeeze in a few extra small homes in an awkwardly shaped section of the site close to St Peter's Farm.  Although there is no remaining evidence for the street name, it is possible to search for it.  All we need is to return to the period prior to the development in the late 1890s.

Hatfield Road passes the farm in 1872.  Clarence Road will later be laid just
to the left of the pond; the shrubbery is to the right of the farm buildings.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

So clear all homes and shops from your mind – even the 1880s Cavendish estate. Stand, in your imagination, at the top of the hill in Hatfield Road and look down  towards what is now The Crown junction.  Here was yet another broad stream valley with its lowest ground from right to left into Camp Road.  Apart from a tiny turnpike toll building only one pair of buildings would be visible: St Peter's Farm and the adjacent St Peter's Farm Cottage.

Laurel Road c2012.  The houses in the background front onto Clarence Road.

They are still there in the form of the Conservative Club and Clarence Mews, the latter being a gated conversion of former farm outbuildings accessible from Clarence Road, opposite the main park entrance.  The farm buildings are not ancient in the sense of most farm homesteads; it appears that this was a farm holding created in the early 19th century.  But when built the land owner still felt it important to lay the homestead foundations on slightly elevated  ground on the eastern side of the valley referred to above – today we walk this valley side in front of the shops from the Crown corner towards Laurel Road.

With a change of tenancy in 1878 the farm buildings were advertised on the farm estate plan, along with its fields.  When the farm was sold in the late 1890s, there remained two homes available to sell or let which were already there, the farm and farm cottage.  The opportunity was taken to provide a name for this pair, and so they became known as Laurel Bank after the shrubs and trees growing behind the farm, as shown in the 1872 map.  It is from this landscape feature that the little road at the top of the valley side was named.

Estate map St Peter's Farm, 1878.  The owner has named the farm Ardounie
COURTESY HALS

The street directories at the time show that the first occupants were Mr G Mead (farm) and Mr H Pearce (cottage), but they was quickly followed by Edward Hansell, an architect and surveyor.  It is therefore possible that Mr Hansell was involved in the residential developments then being laid out along Hatfield Road.  Once most of the estate had been completed Laurel Bank became available once more and Mr Raymond Nelson, a draper and outfitter, lived and traded from the premises until the Conservative Club acquired the former farm c1946.

Hatfield Road in lower part of view; Clarence Road upper left; former farm and cottage behind the hedge in Hatfield Road.
Former outbuildings converted into a square Mews arrangement.  Laurel Road on right.  Former shrubbery between the
farm and Laurel Road.
COURTESY GOOGLE EARTH

While that may explain the naming of Laurel Road and its connection with the former farm, there is another name which is revealed in the 1878 farm estate map.  For while the Ordnance Survey map from six years earlier labels the buildings as St Peter's Farm, the farm estate map identifies the homestead as Ardounie.  This name is listed in the reference work Fairbairns Crests, although its specific connection with this location is unclear.

Next time we'll explore those homes and shops which filled the space between the newly laid out Clarence Park Road (as originally named) and that little Laurel Road at the top of the hill, passing the old farm on the way.

Useful Retail Trade

Near the junction with Sandfield Road this Hatfield Road premises was built c1905 and occupied by builder and joiner James Andrew.  You may recognise the familiar features of the frontage, which, apart from colours, has changed little.  Today it is part of SK Carpets, and for more than half a century was P H Stone, newsagent. There is no evidence for this but it is likely that Mrs Andrew and daughter looked after the shop and are shown in the photo.

James Andrew's first shop at 157 Hatfield Road.

The same premises (on the right) in 2012.

Mr Andrew, having arrived in Hatfield Road, lost little time in acquiring a plot opposite for use as a yard for his building work.  I can't be certain he may also have built what was originally a semi-detached pair, named Surrey House and Troon House.  They were early enough which, together with the yard, was numbered in the initial Post Office  sequence.  As with most of the early homes along Hatfield Road they remained purely residences for a very short time before the benefits of retail trade became irresistible.  The facts appear to show the closure of the shop on the north side at about the same time as the righthand premises were opened as a shop on the south side.  James Andrew himself may have converted it so that all of his business was on one site.

Although keeping the building yard until about 1930, he gave up the shop around 1925.  Harry Tuckett, whose father had been a manager at Hallam's ironmongery shop on the corner of Chequer Street and High Street, took over the shop.  His older brother Bertie had been running the New Camp General Stores since 1910; this is the shop which itself became an ironmongers under John Dearman, and latterly Dearman-Gomm's, now closed.

Meanwhile Surrey House next door to the Hatfield Road ironmongery was also quickly turned into a shop for drapery; at first by Deekin & Watson.  But as soon as Harry Tuckett secured Mr Andrew's former premises, Harry's sister, Edith ran the drapery business next door.

When Harry died in 1952, Leonard Reed purchased the ironmongery and Gladys Cox turned the drapery into an outfitter's.  In competition with the nearby Handy Stores, Leon Reed not only added timber sales in the former outfitter's shop, but also added  extensions to the left and right to further expand his product ranges. However, the arrival of DIY warehouses made small ironmongery shops untenable and by the 1990s both Reeds, Handy Stores, and another useful shop, Blackstaffe's, had gone.

The original houses, Surrey House and Troon House: the drapery on the left and Tuckett's on the
right.  Mr Reed's two extensions on a day following final closure.
COURTESY DIANA DEVEREUX

Access to Mr Andrew's builder's yard was to the right of the extension.  Behind the red car is the 1960s block Grimsdyke Lodge, built by Grimsdyke Developments Ltd, and formerly a detached house and lock-up garage plot.  COURTESY DIANA DEVEREUX.

While we have the opportunity of investigating the 1990s photo with the red car we can take a peep beyond to the Grimsdyke Lodge flats, a late 1960s development.  At the far end was a 1930s detached house lived in for most of its time by Mrs Bell.  A large area to the right and presumably intended as a garden, was used as a rather untidy group of car lock-up garages.

Scrutiny of the Valuation Office records indicates the owner of the lock-up garages was C H Lavers, 12 Alma Road.  The record is dated 1953, but Lavers may well have acquired the site at the same time as it had purchased its timber yard (now Morrison's petrol station and car park) in c1925.  This date coincides with the withdrawal of James Andrew from trading in Hatfield Road.  Which neatly returns us to our starting point.

Except that we've not discovered what was built more recently.  Well, this: the Richmond House development and its bike shop!

Not Easy to Smile

This Friday and Saturday is the 75th Anniversary of VE Day, Victory in Europe, in the closing stages of the Second World War.  8th May for most of us, but we should remember that the communities in the Channel Islands would have to wait a further 24 hours before being freed from enemy control on the 9th; every year since the islands have commemorated Liberation Day.

Preparing for VE Day at Pageant Road
COURTESY ANGELA EMERY

We had all been anticipating this date;  a similar experience every young child has from early December, waiting impatiently for Christmas to arrive.  With many staple foods in short supply householders had been saving a little at a time against the ration, and food and drink which would last for a long time, tins, powders, drink would be brought out in readiness for a celebration on the day. 

VJ Day street party in Elm Drive
COURTESY JENNY BOLTON

Most of the surviving film we will see on television this week  focused on the mass gatherings in city centres, but more people enjoyed themselves in their localities with their families and  children at street parties.  We know of such parties in Burnham Road, Castle Road, Woodland Drive, Cavendish Road and Longacres, but there are also likely to have been others.  Pianos, wireless radios and gramophones to provide music, chairs and tables borrowed from homes, local churches, and schools and other community buildings; food and drink pooled from home kitchens and brought to the centre of the parties in closed roads; and whatever decorations, bunting and messages could be mustered in the hours beforehand.

These were the brief days of huge relief after six years of everyone's world being turned upside down.  Men serving in the forces, many of whom not returning, families sent to where the war-footing work was; families broken with children evacuated – mums too;  shortage of most materials, including food, and therefore ongoing management of ration books and points.  Many contended with other adults or children billeted in our homes; the frequent fear of being bombed and alerted perhaps in the middle of the night by sirens; living a transient life in shelters.

Bomb damage Selwyn Estate 1944
COURTESY HERTS ADVERTISER

On VE Day the over-riding feeling was relief, all of that was now in the past.  It was over.  Except that it wasn't.  Life wasn't going to return to the peaceful and normal pre-war days.  Rationing would continue until 1954; troops would only return gradually, battles had still to be fought,  the economy was bankrupt, we were persuaded to save everything we could.  Bombed out towns and cities had to be re-built, housing was in acutely short supply, and most products from factories were reserved for export.

Yes, over time, our lives did improve and there was a new normal, moulded gradually over a generation.  On May 8th and 9th 1945 we could relax and look forward, although tens of thousands of families would be commemorating a loved one lost, perhaps with a candle in the window.  It was a brief interval before preparing ourselves for repairing and moving on.

This is a story for our times too; we are again looking forward to that brief interlude, a candle-lighting moment, before preparing ourselves for repairing and moving on.  May 8th and 9th will have more resonance to us this year than on any previous occasion.