Remembering This Year

 The first blog of 2023 looked back, not to 2022, but a full one hundred years to 1922.  That was a fascinating year that was.  I'll jump back to 1923 next time, but for now I will modestly roll back to the beginning of this year and will probably grasp how swiftly the months of this year have flown by – so quickly sometimes I have managed to record just two posts in an entire month, reaching the usual average of 36 this year.  But there has been an increase in series posts, so I will begin with these.

One of five titles in the series of little books about St Albans, and presented as a sequence of photographs, mainly taken between c1880 and the Second World War.

In the summer I felt it desirable to alert readers to a number of books about St Albans which are often neglected – I've called them The Little Books – slim volumes, small page sizes, a minimum of text, but the main feature is their prominence of photographs.  We are allowed the pleasure of focusing on one page at a time.  I covered five such books and assessed what proportion of the images shown were photographed in our east end.

With the publication of the city's Green District Plan there followed a short series of posts about some of the East End's green open spaces, including pocket spaces and forgotten places which, nevertheless, can inspire us or help us to collect our thoughts.

Opportunities to relax in the district's open spaces were explored after the publication of the District's Green District Plan.

A more recent series which I'll return to occasionally, are visits to individual roads or lanes; how and why they first appeared and what might have made them special.  This series began with Shirley road where, it appears, few of us have heard of.  And this road came about in the series because I wanted to highlight an unusual building along Shirley Road whose main function few had seen, and now it is too late.  It was the local equivalent of a British Restaurant which we. in St Albans, knew as a Civic Restaurant.  The restaurant building was finally removed from the scene c1975. So far you can read about the roads of the Breakspear estate, Coach Mews, Sutton Road, Royal Road and Princes Road; others will appear during the course of 2024.

Another short series reminded us of the old names by which fields were once known, and had been remembered for possibly hundreds of years.  One collection of fields was, and is still remembered as, The Nine Fields, between Brampton Road and Sandpit Lane.  And nine appears in the names of other east end fields too.

SAOEE Blog has not been without controversy in its reporting this year.  St Albans City Football Club had applied for an entertainment and music license – or rather a substantial extension to the existing control.  Which, naturally, drew the attention of the Clarence Park Residents' Association and Protect Clarence Park Campaign Group. 

The Blog also helped to celebrate the centenary of the appearance, on maps and signs, of the road classification system which help us to navigate ourselves around the road network, by letter, number and of course by colour.

Among the thousands of children who were evacuated to the city between 1939 and 1945
was a contingent from Ore School, Hastings, whose host school was the now-closed
Priory Park School.

Two contrasting blogs, both published in the summer and both engaged the attentions of the majority of the population in their times. The first in this year of 2023 when the Coronation of Charles III was celebrated, with its street parties, decorations and other special events. When we might have been tugged down with more difficult daily circumstances the Coronation was a short relief of positive buoyancy to bring a few days of light relief.  Contrast that with almost exactly eighty years earlier when it seemed like half of the nation's population appeared to have been on the move, or in some theatre of war.  And a part of this was the movement of children from the large cities to places of comparative safety in the towns and villages of "reception areas".  They faced new temporary lives without their parents; and the millions of adult hosts who accepted them into their homes faced new responsibilities and pressures in looking after their child and/or adult guests.

What a year!

To all my readers of the SAOEE Blog I wish you a very Happy New Year.

Princes Road

 The naming of roads is often intriguing; last week, for instance I explored Royal Road, which probably would have received a rather different name, connected with Fleet Ville's new housing  development, part of the Fleet Printing Works.  Except, that is, Queen Victoria's jubilee was soon followed by her death, and all sorts of royal-related features sprouted around the town.  

The original c1900 development plan from Messrs Hassell and Tomlinson.  The two
coloured blocks show the higher value dwellings to be built (light mauve on the right;
the larger pink block were for lower values. Note, the partnership also built the first
pair of houses in Brampton Road south.  However, the map completely
ignores the presence of Burnham Road being built by rival developer, Mr Horace
Slade.

Princes Road and connections.
COURTESY, OPEN STREET MAP CONTRIBUTORS

So, in addition to Royal Road, Princes Road was added to the street scene.  So, to set the context, George V succeeded Victoria and thus launched the House of Windsor.  George and Mary had four sons, as well as a daughter (Mary, named after her mother). Regrettably daughters were not recognised with the same importance. The princes were Edward, Albert, Henry George, and later came John.  So our Princes Road references four – or if you include latecomer John, five royal princes.

If you were going to announce where this new road came to be located  in the Fleet Ville landscape, it may appear as a minor disappointment to say it filled in a gap!  But that is what happened. A long straight roadway split into two, the first was a trackway beginning at the Marshalls Wick House Drive (now Marshals Drive), would in future become Homewood Road.  An equally straight roadway then continued parallel to the east boundary of the Spencer estate, which was initially called Woodside Road, reaching the top of a steep slope before petering out.

Taken c1914 Princes Road crosses ahead from left to right.  Eaton Road is complete and the
slopes beyond will later become Salisbury Avenue.  Sheppard's bakers are already established
in the district.
COURTESY HALS

From Hatfield Road one of the three Fleet Ville roads was laid for a couple of hundred yards until it reached the footpath between Hatfield Road, Beaumont and St Peter's Church across the fields.  Tess Road stopped at the footpath because that was the boundary of the field printing works owner Thomas Smith had purchased.  

So between Woodside Road (from 1906 renamed Woodstock Road and from 1948 Woodstock Road North) and Tess Road was a road of nothing!  Tantalisingly, other roads were also in build; Brampton Road, and roughly in the middle of the gap to the west was Burnham Road, both being Mr Horace Slade's building estate and both stopping well short of the gap.  Then there was, to the east, the distant line of Beaumont Avenue and a prepared new road called Salisbury Avenue.

 A building partnership of Edward Hansell and Thomas Tomlinson eyed this irregular potential building site with its multiple connections to other roads, acquired it and started construction.  Instead of retaining the names Tess or Woodside, and because a royal opportunity was too good to miss in 1900, the partnership went for Princes Road.  Nearly half a century later these were the homes which would have to be renumbered as Princes gave way to Woodstock South.

Tomlinson and Hassell were only successful in their bid to build houses because St Albans Corporation had considered purchasing the same field a full two decades earlier to use as a cemetery, but decided it would be too small and too far away from St Albans, settling on the present cemetery location instead.

View southwards from the hop of the hill at Woodstock Road north.

Princes Road west with the Brampton Road junction to the right.

The street plate shows the demarcation between Woodstock Road North on the left,
and the northern-most homes of former Princes Road (now Woodstock Road South)
on the right.

View from the houses north of Burnham Road towards Brampton Road (see the second view in
this series.

Finally, the homes between Burnham Road right) and the tree-lined playground of

Fleetville Infant and Nursery School.

SERIES COURTESY GOOGLE STREET VIEW

The estate may have been small in size, but it welcomed residents and passers through from many directions.  In the post WW2 era Princes Road also brought buses (354 Fleetville Circular) from Woodstock Road North to Hatfield Road, and from Brampton Road to Woodstock Road North.  And you could not have been much closer to a local school.

In case you might have thought so compact a development could have been completed quickly, the first two pairs of homes, opposite each other, were completed c1902, but four homes adjacent to Brampton Road and four homes adjacent to Eaton Road remained unbuilt land until after 1910.

At least Princes Road remained remarkably free of flooding, a regular feature of the Eaton Road arm of the estate, but the road's even numbered houses were probably beset by some soggy rear gardens as a result of the proximity of same stream which crossed Eaton Road.

Royal Road

Fleetville Schools (now Fleetville Infants & Nursery) and four of the semi-detached homes
on the east site of Royal Road.
COURTESY GOOGLE STREET VIEW

 When we refer to Fleetville these days we keep in our mind a much wider area than was originally planned, a tightly packed community of three roads on the north side of Hatfield Road and an associated printing works (now redeveloped as Morrison's on the south side).  For a few short years there remained fields on all sides.  And the name Fleet Ville took its name from the the T E Smith printing company's London headquarters just off Fleet Street – the name of the printing factory locally being named Fleet Works.

Fleet House, now flatted.  The original front porch and door observed by the central
cleaner brickwork. The original gateway was to the right of the parking sign.

As with many speculative developments Fleet Ville was not completed.  Arthur Road was finished, and Tess Road (now Woodstock Road South) was partly complete, although most of its west side was purchased for use as a school and a police station.  Royal Road was barely begun.  We will recognise the three semi-detached pairs of cottages built in the early 1900s, and the Fleetville Schools building whose plot spread Royal Road and Tess Road. A detached property, Fleet House, had nothing to do with the  Printing Works and was not added to the corner plot until the 1930s, becoming the home and practice of Dr F Smyth who had previously occupied an apartment at Bycullah Terrace. Currently the building is in the middle of yet another transformation into flats.

The west side of Royal Road remained unbuilt and passed to Mr T E Smith's son after his death in 1904.  The imperative to complete the housing plan begun by his father, Mr Smith jnr recognised there was no real need to complete the company housing accommodation given the fast-growing building estates between Royal Road and The Crown.

We will never know how Mr Smith's estate would have been laid out as no plans have made it into the public domain.  We assume the west side of the road would have been completed, with a cul-de-sac parallel to Hatfield Road to abutt the boundary of the Slade estate at the eastern end of the Harlesden Road rear gardens.  

The north end of the road with a newly built house at the end of a Burnham Road plot.
The original intention was to keep the roadway open into Burnham Road.
COURTESY GOOGLE STREET VIEW

Later homes built across the intended road junction.
COURTESY GOOGLE EARTH

The northern end of Royal Road was left open, as were the plots intended for Burnham Road behind.  Connecting agreements were not made and after 1910 three additional houses were constructed to the Burnham Road frontage.  Royal Road therefore became a permanent "dead end" and access to Burnham Road was limited to its two end points, Harlesden Road and Princes Road (Woodstock Road South)*

A pre-WW2 photo taken from where the present community centre is now located, and
showing the original railings along the Royal Road frontage.
COURTESY FLEETVILLE INFANTS SCHOOL & NURSERY ARCHIVE

Charles Woollam, a generous benefactor to the city's communities, acquired the remainder of the Smith land and, in 1913, gifted it to the city for the free use of the people of Fleetville as a "pleasure ground"; generations of Fleetville people have identified it as Fleetville Recreation Ground (the rec.) and today many of us know it as Fleetville Park.  That year the city council came close to using the ground for emergency allotments, but instead seeded the soil, gifted us with a set of swings, and installed metal railings on all four sides with gates to Hatfield Road, where Beech Tree Cafe is, and opposite the boundary between the school and house number 12.  Interestingly, gates were installed at the end of the rear gardens of the Burnham Road houses, giving direct access to the Pleasure Ground.

The WW2 underground shelters, still entombed on the recreation ground.  The 
emergency exits are still visible and quite clear in hot dry summers

In 1938 open zig-zag trenches were dug close to the rear of the Burnham Road gardens (perhaps that was when their gates were installed?) and close to the Royal Road gate.  By the war outbreak these trenches were deepened, widened, interconnected, capped and with emergency exits installed – the latter still identifiable in hot dry summers.  An emergency water tank was constructed close to where the zip wire is today.

The temporary nursery brought to the recreation ground in 1942, and still in use as 
Fleetville Community Centre.  A replacement building is planned – finally!

In 1942 a temporary concrete and block building, pre-formed in Hoddesdon, was brought to this site to serve as a nursery for the mothers working at the munitions factory (site redeveloped as Morrison's).  Temporary it might have been, but the same building is still in daily use as Fleetville's Community Centre.

In the early 1950s part of the west side of Royal Road was marked out and signposted as the district's first street parking zone.  Today, it is all but impossible to find a spare parking spot anywhere in the road!

Finally we return to the name by which the road is named.  The plans were being prepared in the period up to 1900; Queen Victoria had celebrated her jubilee, the royal accession and the royal princes topped newspaper stories.  So it was not a surprise for this little cul-de-sac to be awarded a royal association.

* It should be clarified that Tess Road only extended to the entrance of the public footpath, known locally as The Alley.  Between this point and the mouth of Brampton Road was separately developed as a road named Princes Road.  These two roads retained their separate names until 1948 when they were renumbered and given a common name: Woodstock Road South.

Sutton Lakes

 Last week we landed at a cul-de-sac which was once part of the branch railway sidings at Fleetville, and is now called Coach Mews.  This week we move just a few metres to locate a railway bridge across Sutton Road which was shown in the previous blog.

The 1872 Ordnance Survey shows Hatfield Road with the unnamed toll house next to the
farm track (now Sutton Road).  The then new branch railway crosses and climbs very
gently over the track.  Space for a future siding is on the right of the bridge.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

Many residents living in or around Fleetville have little or no knowledge of the bridge; its loss was some fifty years ago, although the bridge deck was lost even earlier.  But the story of this little railway bridge began some forty years before any building in Fleetville was planted on the landscape.

The line which Sutton Road takes today was a farm track right on the edge of Beaumonts Farm, and it was there because there had also been a stream here – water courses often marked the boundaries between properties or districts.  The track beside it was used by carts and their horses working that part of the farm.  The stream appears to have been a former stream even by the early-nineteenth century and it is probable the track followed the bed itself rather than being laid beside it.

When the railway arrived in the 1860s the embankment was created to ensure farm carts were still able to use the track; thus what is known as a simple occupation bridge was constructed.  The little embankment beside Coach Mews was created to enable the trains to climb over the cart track, which of course is now Sutton Road.

A collection of photographs on flooding events.  The top image identifies the second board walk
with probably Nicholson's employees on their way to work at the factory just visible on the
left on the far side of the track.  The centre image is probably earlier than the top one.  Adults and
children can be seen at the top of the embankment.  The bottom photo demonstrates the
challenging task of getting a cart below the bridge in flooded conditions.

The cart track was little wider than the carts themselves and so the bridge parapets were also not very wide – certainly not wide enough for two carts to pass.  Across the top iron beams were laid to support the rails; only one pair as it was a single track railway.  A simple wooden fence crossed the bridge to protect the rails, but this may not have been an original feature, added later when pedestrians passed underneath to the new factories and homes nearby from the early 1900s.

What must have been clear from the start is that loaded carts could not easily pass under the bridge, even if empty ones could.  The response to this issue was to dig out more subsoil from the trackway under the bridge.  But it was quickly realised that this brought the water table closer to the surface and in wet weather the cartway easily flooded.

To assist pedestrians a raised wooden walkway was constructed, first on the Fleetville Sidings side of Sutton Road.  Later photographs show a similar timber walkway on the west side of the road, replacing the former structure.  The purpose of both was to enable safe passage for pedestrians above the water level when the hollow under the bridge was flooded, which it frequently was.  The second boardwalk must have been removed some time before the Second World War; it certainly wasn't there afterwards.

The deeper the floodwater the more extensive was its surface area and extent.  Most of the known flood images were probably taken as they included children's activity, enjoying the novelty of an informal paddling pool.  The sobriquet Sutton Lakes was made popular from these early years.  One issue arising for the wet weather lake formations was the increase in numbers of pedestrians climbing the embankment on the east side and crossing the railway line at the top.  While this was never a busy railway, such a venture can never be considered zero risk, and it is children who inevitably would, and did, attempt it, undoubtedly for the fun rather than for need.

Photograph looking towards Hatfield Road taken in 1967 shortly before the bridge was
"decapitated" and all rail traffic had stopped.
COURTESY ROGER D TAYLOR

The bridge has disappeared.  Improvement works to benefit Alban Way.

Access under the bridge for vehicles was limited, both in width and height – headroom was 10 feet and the creation of a very narrow pavement of no more than two feet width ensured travel levels were low; bicycles and small cars only!

No time was lost after the 1960s final closure of the route;  the bridge deck was unceremoniously  removed, but it was sometime later that the parapets and embankment were demolished.  Quite a day when the hollow was finally filled in and kerbed full width – a normal road, and the bridge was just a memory.  However, nearby residents will attest Fleetville has not yet seen the end of flooding at this little corner of town.

Sutton Road looking towards Hatfield Road at the Coach Mews junction.  The approaching
truck would have had no chance of being driven from Fleetville to Camp in "bridge days".
COURTESY GOOGLE STREET VIEW

Coach Mews

 This week our peep into a residential street suggests a Victorian origin, but if we were to investigate further a surprise awaits us for the houses set well back from the Sutton Road by which we gain access reveals a small number of short and neat rows of modern homes. Surely this is a tight infill development making use of a different land use altogether.

Coach Mews suggests an example of West London cul-de-sacs where horse drawn coaches were housed; the keepers, or coachmen, living in accommodation over.  But if we walked along Coach Mews in search of such a Victorian terrace we would be quite disappointed.

Stand on the Morrison's side of Sutton Road and this will be your view to the left of the
former Nicholson Coat factory – its name still affixed to the front elevation wall.  This
is the entrance to Coach Mews.

The Coach in the street plate name is intended to be a link to early railway coaches, and the first clue to the former use of the site is along the roadway we use to reach the houses.  Alban Way is the walking and cycling route which makes use of the branch railway between Hatfield and St Albans (London Road and Abbey stations).  Locally it is the path behind Morrison's supermarket.  A (very very) low bridge once carried the railway over Sutton Road, with the assistance of a regularly flooded hollow cut into the roadway.  Today we are able to  cross the road on the level – the cutting having been infilled, and walk with a not very high railway embankment to our left.  Shortly we divert to the left and climb to the top of the embankment and discover our Coach Mews homes to the right.  If we kept walking our destination might be Ashley Road, Hill End, Smallford or Hatfield; a delightful leisure way, or perhaps a cycle run making a short cut to work.

The view along Sutton Road from the Hatfield Road.  Regular flooding encourage the name 
Sutton Lakes.  The large sign on the top of the embankment announced Fleetville Sidings.

The view along Sutton Road on the southern side.  On this occasion it was snow, rather than rain,
which made a splendid scene for the photographer.
COURTESY ST ALBANS MUSEUMS

The railway line, of which the sidings are part, were laid some thirty years before any buildings appeared in Fleetville, apart from a toll house.  The line jumped over the farm track, now Sutton Road, with barely enough headroom for a farm cart.  The siding on which the present houses are built, was added when the first factories arrived at the turn of the twentieth century.  The entrepreneurial owner of the coat factory, Mr Nicholson, who had purchased much nearby land, invited factory owners to rent some of his land in Hedley Road with the benefit of a railway siding at the back of the plot.  The fact that most of Hedley Road is today lined with houses suggests that the factory idea was not popular.

Sutton Road lies N to S towards the left of the map.  The orange line forms the boundary of the
Sidings of the branch railway which were added in the early 1900s.  The strip within the
orange box but south of the railway embankment was acquired by Alfred Nicholson for
future factory sidings which did not materialise.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND.

Over the next thirty years there were occasional promises from the railway company of opening a passenger station on the site for the benefit of the people of Fleetville, which would enable passengers to reach the capital via either Hatfield or St Albans.  Unfortunately, bus companies were becoming popular by the mid-twenties, even before the days of London Transport (now Transport for London).  The former's Country Department ran bus services throughout Hertfordshire,  passengers being able to board a bus along or near Hatfield Road to the City Station. So Fleetville Station never came about and the passenger railway closed in 1951.

A group of the modern homes along Coach Mews.
COURTESY GOOGLE STREET VIEW.

The siding, however, remained for the delivery of coal, delivered by what were then called goods trains.  Lorries owned by a selection of local coal merchants called at the siding – a coal yard – to deliver different types of coal to their customers for their open fires and domestic boilers.  The coal yard did not survive until the 1970s, and the opportunity was eventually taken to add to Fleetville's population with the homes we see today.

Breakspear Estate

 Last week I introduced those who had never been to the prison (while remaining innocent!) to the cut-de-sac road behind the end of Grimston Road at the City Station.  Shirley Road.  Built on land left over from the construction of the county gaol.

The green block was Frederick Sander's private garden although we know nothing of its character.
Camp Road then separates the garden from his orchid nursery. The blue Broken line a section of
the former Sweetbriar Lane path.
COURTESY HALS

Frederick Sander, the "Orchid King", having apparently made a good income from his shop in George Street aspired to acquire a field known as Nine Acres on the east side of Camp Road, on which he laid out his orchid nursery and home – paid for by building the houses on the adjacent Cavendish estate.  He also acquired the former Fete Field (now the recreation section of Clarence Park) and the slopes of Gaol Field on the west side of Camp Road.  It is not clear the reason for the latter two purchases, except that he laid out his own family garden on a small part of the latter field because it was not possible to find sufficient space adjacent to, or even close to his home; the nursery glasshouses and warehouses left no private space.  Today Ss Alban & Stephen Infant School and Nursery occupies the site of the garden, and Ss Alban & Stephen Junior School thrives in place of the orchid nursery.  I have yet to find a photograph which shows the layout of the garden, although the OS map does sketch a generic design.

The former garden, now Ss Alban & Stephen school Infants and Nursery School.

Following the death of Mr Sander the land, including the garden, was sold by the family.  The garden initially become the site of Ss Alban & Stephen Elementary School and is now an expanded Inant and Nursery school. Then the development of the Gaol Field slope was, at least in part, taken forward by C Miskin Ltd.  Broadly a fan of roads diverging from Grimston Road passing in front of the prison, downhill towards Camp Road and the Hatfield & St Albans Railway.  At the centre of the fan linking Grimston Road is Breakspear Avenue.  The road commemorates twelfth century Nicholas Breakspear (Pope Adrian IV) who had spent his formative years at the St Albans Monastery.  The other roads are orchid related: Flora Grove, Vanda Crescent and Edward Close.  The latter recognises Sydenham Edwards who launched the Botanical Register in 1815.  Flora Grove was laid with the possible intention of connecting with a spur from Dellfield via a bridge over the branch railway.  Such a connection did not take place.

Edward Close is short and does not make it all the way downhill to Camp Road, the land having been acquired by Samuel Ryder and donated to Trinity Church for the laying out of tennis courts and then a scout centre, before being sold on in the 1970s for housing. The modern houses are accessed from Camp Road by Ulverston Close.  This part of the field was, however, quite separate from what was known by the "Electric Estate".

This Miskin estate was an advance in house building during the late 1920s.  The majority of earlier homes were supplied only with gas, although electricity was ordered for specific villas and town houses, at the behest of their first owners. 

Announcing the new "Electric estate".  A spelling error has crept into the name of one of the 
estate's main roads!

The show home, on the south-east side of Flora Grove, was equipped with a range of electric lamps, kitchen utensils, cooking and heating appliances.   The advertising let potential purchasers know that space was being left at the side of each house for the future building of a garage if required.

The lower end of Flora Grove.  Beyond the trees was the branch railway.

Crossing Vanda Crescent the route of former Sweetbriar Lane can be traced.

Former Sweetbriar Lane as it approached Camp Lane at Dellfield.

Grimston Road had been laid as a continuation of Victoria Road (before it became Victoria Street).  A track known as Sweetbriar Lane gave a connection from Victoria Road to Camp Road using a line of route which was subsequently built on by the Breakspear estate.  The track, now a footpath, can still be walked with just one deviation between Breakspear Avenue and Vanda Crescent, and another in order to cross the branch railway, now Alban Way. Sweetbriar Lane was the main connection with the farms and hamlets on the east side of St Albans, so arriving and leaving the market was via the Chequer Street/St Peter's Street/Victoria Street junction – although the latter road had other previous names.

The estate roads offered a mix of freehold and rental properties and the agent was William Young of St Peter's Street, opposite to the cattle market located in front of the Town Hall.

The upper section of Camp Road reveals the former Yokohoma Nursery until developed post 
World War Two.

We can track the development of the estate from the surviving residential directories, and it is quite evident the pace of construction was fairly swift, with most plots having been sold by 1930.  The earliest homes in Flora Grove were in the lowest section adjacent to the branch railway.  The properties at the very foot of Camp Road, too, were prompt to be built.  The only portion left until after the Second World War was up to up to and including number 10.  Until the mid fifties was Yokohama Nursery which occupied much of the ground.  The short access drive for the later development was named Ninedells Place, previously the name given to the nursery on the opposite site of Camp Road which had been purchased by Sander for housing on the Cavendish estate.

There has been more, much more, to reveal about the land next to the prison and on either side of the the Sweetbriar path than might have been expected.

 

Shirley Road

 Shirley Road, a cut-de-sac, was recently included in my blog about pocket spaces in the public realm, for the grassed area between its two rows of homes.  Today I am taking a more detailed look at how Shirley Road came about, which includes an area of land considerably beyond the road itself, and is connected with the acquisition of land for the Midland Railway and the purchase of nearby land for the County Gaol. It is not surprising most residents have little idea of the road and its location, although more of us sweep past it, probably without realising, as we take a short cut from Victoria Street bridge onto Grimston Road, en route to Camp Road via Breakspear Avenue or Flora Grove.

And, as you will notice, no map shows the structure of the prison within the boundary walls.  It was a security issue!

The site of the former prison hugs the Midland Railway at St Albans City Station.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

The acquisition of land for the prison by the authority prompted the eventual development of a much large area, a neat line having been separated for a second railway line.  The 1878 map illustrates the issue; the sloping boundary extends to Camp Road and the land holding had already been intersected on its eastern boundary for the laying of the Hatfield & St Albans Railway.  Post-sale the remaining acreage, which, by then may have been a single field, was known as Gaol Field, the north-east (Camp Road) section acquired first of all by orchid king Frederick Sander and then sold on for housing – the Breakspear estate – in the 1930s.  The field section adjacent to the then-new Midland Railway soon became the property of the Corporation, although the prison may have retained ownership initially, possibly until the closure of the gaol c1915.

The same location in 1898
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

The same location in 1924
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

Thew same location in 1937
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

By 1922 when an updated edition of the OS map was surveyed the new owner, presumed to be the corporation,  divided its apportionment into two blocks; the south-west block became a nursery, preparing plants for transfer to public spaces including Clarence Park.  The north-east block helped to expand the city's estate of allotments.   A separate block of allotments was developed adjacent to the Midland railway and possibly the residual land belonging to it.  Today this is part of the Charington Place multi-storey car park and flats.

With private enterprise housebuilding came the development the Breakspear estate; the city council created a small number of semi-detached homes of its own in the 1930s, using the former nursery and allotments.  Remains of the former layout was carefully preserved as a narrow strip of allotment gardens, today called the Shirley Road allotments which lies between Shirley Road and Flora Grove.

If we compare the 1937 OS map and today's aerial photo it appears clear that the Shirley Road estate was not quite completed; left vacant is a space on the south-west side where up to ten homes were never built; possibly a shortage of council funds or termination of building at the beginning of World War 2.

The Shirley Road Civic Restaurant after closure c1955.  I have discover no further image of
this building.
COURTESY THE HERTS ADVERTISER

Shirley Road car park.  In the background are the modern buildings which have replaced the
prison cell blocks not shown on the OS maps.
COURTESY GOOGLE STREET VIEW

Today a car park and a re-alignment of Shirley Road occupies the unused space.  For a few years at the end of World War 2 a temporary building was placed here and used as a civic restaurant, augmenting the service offered at the former Civic Hall (formerly called Market Hall) behind St Peter's Street at the former Cattle Market.  A lot of buildings no longer extant!

The Shirley Road Civic Restaurant continued as a useful community building and was rented by the County Council for the preparation of school meals until 1955. The restaurant undoubtedly served parts of the Camp and Fleetville district well, with its subsidised meals for factory employees.

Midland Railway skirts the left edge.  The empty Shirley Road car park sits diagonally in the
lower left of the view and Shirley Road is to its right, with a loop at the south-eastern end, looking much like a needle.
Victoria Street bridge and the rail station are in the top left corner.
COURTESY GOOGLE EARTH

So, who was Shirley, to be commemorated or recognised in the name of one of the city's roads?  James Shirley was a 17th century playwright and poet, and was a Master of St Albans School. 

Next time I'll explore what came to be known as the Electric Estate.

Park That Never Was

 Continuing the series on public open spaces – or parks by any other name – we need to include those spaces which were proposed but not created, as well as open space which already existed but failed to become enlarged, although that increase had been proposed.  An example of each lies in Marshalswick.

The expectations laid at the door of local authorities from the 1930s onwards required the provision of public open space for use as parks, recreation grounds, sports grounds and informal open spaces in all new and growing development areas.  The council worked on planning the distribution of spaces across the city for different kinds of public use so that, as far as possible, no parts of the urban sphere were unfairly deprived, and that in each residential district there was sufficient public open space to satisfy the needs of a healthy population.

In the late 1940s the council investigated two locations on the early Marshalls Wick, but because all of the land was in the hands of developers by that time, plots could only change hands at full land prices; the proposals were therefore heavily constrained by cost.

The horseshoe-shaped road was designed to replace an earlier series of parallel roads.  Gurney Court Road and Charmouth Road are to the left in a photograph taken by the RAF in 1946.

The first location was The Park near Faircross Way, specifically the inner circle.  Housing had already begun on the outer circle or was still being managed as wartime allotments.  If intended as a general open space it would have served rather nicely as a small park, given that there were already a small number of healthy mature trees.  However, the council had an under-supply of certain types of sporting spaces, one of which was cricket.  Yes, you've guessed, St Albans Council intended to purchase the inner circle for the playing of cricket.

Now, it is true no house building had begun on the inner circle and even outer circle building was in its early stages.  So there were few individual objectors, but developer/land owner Christopher Miskin – who also built a substantial house at one end of the outer circle – certainly exerted some pressure.  With a cricket field in the middle the value of the outer circle homes would have been considerably lower. And of course the council would have to expend the land costs of around thirty detached homes on the first stage of acquiring the sporting space. Thereafter the authority would have denied itself the annual income of valuable rates (now council tax) due – and presumably the additional ongoing cost of occasional broken windows from across the road; every one a six!

Homes along the inner circle of The Park, which did not develop into "a park" in the 1950s.

So today there are thirty homes and mature trees, but no cricket field.

Due east from The Park (which did not materialise into a park) is the public open space known as The Wick, which we have all enjoyed since the 1930s.  The Wick began in much the same way as The Park; a development opportunity which appeared on planning maps of the early 1930s; yet more roads-worth of homes spreading eastwards towards Marshalswick Lane, including one to be called Hazel Grove.  But the owner of a large house in Sandpit Lane, Sir Arthur Peake put a stop to the housing development opposite him just in time.  He used his wealth, effectively became the developer, and then gifted the land to the Council for the benefit of the people of St Albans.  Thank you, Sir Arthur.

A summer scene within the wooded section of The Wick, a local nature reserve.

Post-war it appears that one of the Council's criteria for allocating public open space was the acreage of land it needed to acquire.  So you might have added twenty small pockets of land and determined between them you had enough to create a couple of football pitches; just not all contiguous pockets of land!  The council was short of a few acres in the Marshalswick area, but realised purchasing the plots required would be prohibitively expensive, it pulled out of negotiations.  The plots it was proposing to add to The Wick were undoubtedly the fifteen along Marshalls Drive: five on the east side of the Wick gate path, and eleven north-west to Homewood Drive.  None had been built on in 1949.  Today all five of the east side homes exist, but only five of the north-west plots were developed.  

Part of the open space, originally called a recreation ground, at The Wick.

The Council did not proceeded with its plan to expand The Wick, or if it did it was limited to the areas of six properties which are today woodland.  It is not clear what uses it had in mind had it proceeded to add to the park.  Presumably it would have end up as a game of numbers rather than the addition of a genuine facility. Indeed, perhaps that is what happened.

However, during the 1950s it did recognise a genuine shortage of open space between Fleetville and Oaklands and took the opportunity of acquiring the Jescott Dahlia Nurseries smallholding from the retiring Ernie Cooper, which became the new site of Longacres Park.