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.