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.

The Pocket Spaces

 We have already established that the Open Spaces Study created to assist the St Albans District Plan consultation is limited in its data range and granularity.  For example, that a park or recreation ground has signage or not, will us little about visitors' engagement with the space other than a sign pointing to a feature exists.

This week I want to explore open spaces at the other end of the range; we might call them pocket spaces, but might even be micro in size.   This time the question to be asked is how useful are they within the community; what do they contribute to our individual or community lives?  We may also need to consider who these spaces belong to, how they came into existence, and do we have legal access to them? So, in no particular order ...

An orchard-style pocket space at Queen's Court, Hatfield Road, for the private use of its residents but having shared views with others using the street scene.

Queen's Court is a square of grass enclosing the three blocks of flats in Hatfield Road, with that road on the fourth side.  When young in the 1950s the grass was bordered with lavender,  adding a sensory element to the scene.  Today this has been removed but there are a few young trees. No doubt the facility still belongs to St Albans Council but the undoubted beneficiaries are the residents of the apartments; the green is a visual stimulant to the senses, but is also a incidental benefit to those passing by the main road and living in the homes opposite.

The lozenge-shaped space which widens the road frontages in Shirley Road.

Shirley Road is another shared green space overlooked by two parallel lines of homes.  It is doubtful if many residents not living in Shirley Road know of it; perhaps not even know the whereabouts of Shirley Road. The green lozenge has a small tree at one end, a telegraph pole at the other, and is punctuated by a couple of drainage covers.  As with many pocket spaces it is not large enough for children to play although residents may occasionally meet there, though their back gardens are undoubtedly more useful – something which cannot be said for any block of flats, sans gardens altogether.  What might it add to the street scene of Shirley Road?  Well, it pushes apart the frontages of the homes to enable a more open vista, and this is now further enabled by restrictions on parking along a section of road which is, effectively, a vehicle turnaround.  

An informal public open space at Burnside, occupying an especially varied vista formerly occupied
by allotments.

Burnside is an example of a planning feature which is a requirement for more modern developments, known as Public Open Space (POS).  Minimum areas of each development are kept free from homes, their garages,  gardens, parking bays and access roads. There are many examples in Jersey Farm, but this one is close to Windermere Avenue.  Burnside open space is large enough to allow for some informality and variety, in the form of hedging and a tree or two.  In this instance it recognises the history of the wider site which was previously a small corner of extensive allotments.  It also benefits, at least in this view, from the complete absence of hard materials with the exception of paths.

Triangles such as these open out the end of a residential street as in merges into a more
established country road:  Gurney Court Road at Sandpit Lane.

Gurney Court Road Triangle is an early, and largely successful, attempt to merge the hard development of a long straight street of semi-detached houses into the tree-lined wastes of Sandpit Lane, as the roadline splays to introduce a grass "field".  The trees are much younger, of course, and the bus stop is a bi-product of Sandpit Lane rather than the residential street. But as with Shirley Road the triangle opens up a welcome space which today is even more important than when it was added to the Lane in the slower paced 1930s.

Here at Camp View Road we may be offered glimpses of green.  At one time this green space was
entirely hidden, the advertising hoardings were mounted at the Camp Road frontage, with the unused ground behind.

Recently the triangular space has disappeared once more as a house now occupies the corner.

Finally, is a reminder of many micro spaces which have become part of the streetscape, and have been so for over one hundred years.  One day they are gone.  We sometimes forget that all land belongs to someone and in the case of Camp View Road Triangle it was the owner of 155 Camp Road, originally Mr Thomas Gear in the early years of the 20th century.  He acquired this little plot next to his home; and he and subsequent owners have taken the rents from advertising hoardings, but there has always been a maintained green strip with various attempts at planting, even ornamental fencing; probably the smallest and narrowest of street-side open spaces. Well, now it is no more; instead a large house has been permitted on the corner of Camp Road and Camp View Road, fully twice the size of any other of the terraced homes in the vicinity.  It became possible because the plot was privately owned.  While we were fortunate in being able to take advantage of the little green space on the corner, we had, in fact, "borrowed" this little corner patch every time we passed.

Our district's many pocket spaces (even micro spaces) are varied in how they benefit us and our little communities.  Without them our streetscapes are the poorer for us and our well being.  We don't have to grab a chair and sit in the space reading a book (although I suppose we could).  The fact the space is open, green and soft is sufficient to be joyfully good for us all!