Behind the Cinema

 This phrase won't mean much to people nowadays, but was sometimes uttered by anyone puzzled by the location of Granville Road.  The cinema in question being the Gaumont.  Part of the field on which the houses of Granville Road – plus Stanhope and Hatfield roads had been carved out in the 1860s for the Midland Railway, the Midland Station and the goods sidings associated with it.

Granville Road on the 1898 OS map.  Granville west development almost complete.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

Oblique view facing west, with Hatfield Road on the right and the junction with Stanhope Road
on the left.
COURTESY GOOGLE EARTH

But that wasn't all.  It was quickly realised that land around many stations was eminently suitable for villa houses for employees and business men having jobs in London. Some of St Albans' early commuters. One road passing through the field between The Crown and Grimston Road was Stanhope Road; which we will return to in the future.  It is the second street which is little known, Granville Road, and while both roads were planted with street trees when first laid out only those in Granville Road remain today.  Trees in Stanhope seem to have been removed when buses used it as a short-cut to the station in the 1920s.

The mission church c1900.  Granville Road to the left. Stanhope Road on the right. Both
roads tree-lined.
COURTESY HALS

The same view as above.  The de Novo Place development.

As with other estates built for sale Granville Road was never finished and some of the plots intended for houses had alternative uses, and second developments.  An added complication was the development of the east side of the road, part of the triangle; more of the triangle later,  but first the west side which backs on to the railway land, part of which possessed an increasing amount of back space nearer the Hatfield Road end.

Walking along the road today from the Hatfield Road end there are blocks of flats on the right for fully half of its length, with mainly semi-detached villas in the further half.  That, however, is not the result of a modern response to an unfinished development.  There had been two substantial detached villas and four further pairs.  Developers looking for suitable land would have taken advantage of the rear gardens and possible spare space which would make modern blocks viable, and so we have The Maples and Ashtree Court today.  An adaption further along, Granville Court, gives us a previous terrace of four with additional accommodation at the rear and a tunnel access.

The remaining villas end at Grimston Road with a vehicle repair premises creating a full stop.

The meeting hall, a 1920s building.

An early view of the cinema.  No-one takes picture of the back of a cinema, but from here it
is possible to imagine the view Granville Road householders had of the mass of the cinema's
rear wall and entrance – for the cheaper seats!

On the triangle side of Granville Road there were a few similar semi-detached pairs, but gradually these became converted workshops for W O Peake, the coat manufacturer, before becoming part of its substantial rebuild from the 1930s.  The prison end became locationally attractive for the mission church and then the Adult School.  In the middle the "little and large" 1920s development of the meeting room and the Grand Palace (Gaumont) Cinema.  Today, on the triangle side only the meeting hall remains unaltered.  The new developments are Cotsmoor with its modern access road, Peake's Place, Chatsworth Court (ex cinema) and de Novo Place.  For the first time since 1880 the old Hatfield Road Field is a fully functioning and almost entirely residential development – and even retains its street trees.  

Perhaps one feature it no longer has today which was once a bonus, is Granville Road's very own entrance to the park, right opposite the mouth of the road.  If you walk along the park boundary today it is possible (just) to spot where householders could take a leisurely saunter across the main road and through the park using their very own gate.