Crown Fields

 Before launching into this week's group of fields you might like to return to last week's post, Nine. I had intended to add an early Fleetville advertisement for Carter's (Sear & Carter later).  After much searching I have finally located it and it takes its place in the middle of the previous post.  Frank Carter located his shop and the adjacent land in Hatfield Road next to St Paul's Church as Ninefields Nursery.  The site of this property is now St Paul's Place.

IT might take some time to identify your location from the tithe map.
COURTESY HALS

The tithe map with roads named and fields identified.  The text below lists the owners by their
printed colours.
COURTESY HALS

This week there is a far larger group of fields (above) to understand if we are to make sense of the district which launched the development after the 1879 expansion of the city's boundaries, from the previous 1835 Lattimore Road boundary as far as the Midland Railway and Crown junction.

Again I have begun with the 1840 tithe map which, as always, is bereft of helpful text labels; just roads, field boundaries and their numbered references, and properties in grey or pink.  So, the first version at the top is how we start, and once the roads have been identified by their curves, straights and junctions, the names of the fields and their owners can be added.  In this locality there are many owners, identified by colour.  We should wonder whether owners sold up enthusiastically, willingly, or following detailed deliberations and only persuaded after offers of a higher price.

The blue fields were those of William Cotton of St Peter's Farm; the purple fields were owned by Thomas Kinder, but away from his Beaumonts Farm; in red were the fields belonging to Edward Boys.  One field, in grey was owned by Widow Brown, who also had a connection with St Peter's Farm, that field being between today's Marlborough and Lattimore roads.  Of the two major land owners Earl Verulam's presence on the map are in orange, while two fields owned by Earl Spencer (and rented by Thomas Kinder) are shown in green.

The map surveyed in 1872 just a handful of years after the building of the Midland Railway.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

Map surveyed in 1897.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

Map surveyed in 1922.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

The Ordnance Survey map surveyed in 1872, forty years after the tithe map, demonstrates the sheer expanse of railway development once it arrives, and on this map are two; the Midland between north and south and the diagonal route of the Hatfield & St Albans branch line.  By this date street development had grown apace so Boys' fields were quickly lost under houses, as are two of Kinder's.  Locals knew this expansion area as New Town.

By the time the 1897 map was surveyed two further developments had appeared on the eastern side of the Midland Railway, touching and over-reaching the new 1879 boundary.  The field known as Nine Acres (not to be confused with Ninefields from last week) first became a nursery before being purchased by Frederick Sander for the Cavendish estate in 1880.  The opportunity arose as soon as the Midland Railway opened, to develop homes for users of the railway (commuters?).  Therefore, Stanhope, Granville and adjacent Hatfield roads were opened up in the 1880s and 1890s.  Earl Spencer, as with all major landowners, made a profit on his resources, and a field did not need to grow crops if a better income could be made From other outputs.  Land owners are not necessarily farmers.

Meanwhile, three more fields owned by Earl Verulam to the south of the map were also up for grabs.  Twelve Acres quickly became the prison at the same time as the Midland Railway arrived, the remaining land on this field becoming known as the Gaol Field and subsequently developed as the Breakspear estate.

Camp Road today, facing uphill to Camp Hill; the route of the former branch railway passing
overhead (but not on this newer bridge).  Originally the lane followed a line further to the right,
but to provide sufficient height it was diverted eastwards as shown on the 1872 map (above).

Camp Lane, on the lower edge of the map, was diverted by the builders of the branch railway route.  Its two adjacent fields, Dell Field and Up And Down Field were pastured until the 20th century and succumbed to housing development from the 1930s as the Dellfield estate.

It is not difficult to use the tithe field boundaries to compare them with the three Ordnance Survey maps for 1872, 1897 and 1922;  many of those boundary lines are still evident in current roads, tracks and footpaths, the edges of gardens and other properties; a fascinating tracing of the locality's progress through the 19th and 20th centuries.