Camp Field

Portion of a scene painted by John Buckingham (1800-1881) near the Camp Field at the foot of
Camp Hill.   Today the Campfield Road/Dellfield road junction is nearby.
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 Few of us with knowledge of the east side of St Albans will need a reminder of the location of today's blog.  Leaving Hatfield Road at The Crown, descend Camp Road and pass under the Blue Bridge.  At the very lowest ground and before climbing Camp Hill, turn left. This is  Campfield Road.  A small branch railway line arrived in the 1860s (the original reason for the bridge, although it wasn't blue then - in fact not the same bridge at all! The railway separated the growing Hatfield Road to the north from the dairy fields and hamlet of Camp Hill to the south.  The artist John Buckingham, painting in the mid 19th century, portrayed this junction very effectively; the road ahead is Camp Hill. 

OS maps surveyed in 1875, 1897 and 1922.
Field number 427 in 1875 was Camp Field. Between it and field 429 was a footpath between
Camp Hill (The Camp) and the Hatfield road.  The two square buildings on the south side
of Campfield Road (1922) are the Electricity Works and Sphere Works.
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On the low-lying land, where Campfield Road is today, there had been a small chalk stream, the same one which had flowed from Marshalswick towards Fleetville before turning across the gently sloping Camp Field towards River Ver.  It is doubtful if much remained of the stream even in the 1860s, but it might have provided one reason a portion of the reason may have eventually been sold out of farming for development.

1930s homes line around half of Campfield Road as well as Valerie Close, Roland Street and one
side of Sutton Road.

We note that the Campfield Road of today is quite lengthy from Camp Lane (now Camp Road) to Sutton Road.  The eastern section is largely semi-detached homes built c1930 by Mr W Stephens for the rental market.  Before that date the field at the eastern end was used by the Oakley family to graze dairy cattle, and for the first decade of the 20th century was utilised as Fleetville's first recreation ground, mainly for the use of of local football teams.  Along the boundary between the upper and lower fields ran a footpath from the oldest section of Camp Hill, downhill towards the stream bed and gently up the opposing slope towards Hatfield Road – opposite where today the western boundary of Fleetville Recreation Ground.

The Miskin built structure as designed for George Orford Smith, including its manager's house
before the site was extended for the Salvation Army's Campfield Press.

The main workshop of the Musical Instrument Works.
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Meanwhile, at the lower end the sale of the water meadow was completed in 1895 to Mr George Orford Smith, who had a sizeable and specialist printing works – thus becoming the first such works in the Fleetville area and relegating T E Smith to second comer by two years.  Orford Smith's works were designed and built by Christopher Miskin & Sons, and included a manager's house.  The company specialised as a fine-art printer, producing high-quality multi-pass colour expensive work for clients, including Illustrated London News.

The modified front building of the 1908 Electricity Works for the nearly completed new
residential development.

However, the works remained in business for only five years, and in 1900 an equally expensive winding up process took place and the buildings were sold on to the Salvation Army which moved its printing, and shortly after its musical instrument works, from the East End; that is, London's East End.  The road, or rather track into the field, was called Campfields.  The road's first iteration was barely longer than the works itself.  However, the Salvation Army also acquired additional land, and so it was that the buildings for the city's electricity works was acquired from the Salvation Army's William Booth in 1908.  The administrative building of the works still stands and is now being converted into residential accommodation to be known as The Old Electricity Works.  New buildings for the development have been constructed at the rear on the site of the former generating furnaces.

Advertising by Engineering & Lighting Equipment Ltd
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ELECO's contract along Victoria Embankment.

The next site to be developed, and appropriately next to the electricity works, was an engineering company, Engineering & Lighting Company Ltd (ELECO) which had begun its life in the Lower Lea Valley.  It specialised in the manufacture of electric street lighting.  One of its earliest products was the globe lighting columns along the Victoria Embankment beside the Thames.  It is probable this product prompted the works to be named Sphere Works.  The company also acquired a site opposite, adjacent to the printing works, using land previously occupied by the Salvation Army's tennis courts.

The former Herts Advertiser building, now Phoenix House

After a century publishing a newspaper in the centre of the city the Herts Advertiser moved out to the suburbs, and to a site known to all today as Phoenix House.  In the 1960s the local news was published from here, and although the address is Camp Road, Phoenix lies along Campfield Road leaning against the hill which is Camp Hill.

On both sides of Campfield Road were temporary land uses during the Second World War; on the east side shelters were driven into the hillside; and on the west there were quarters for the Home Guard, and additional temporary buildings; de Havilland Aircraft Company occupied much of the Salvation Army Musical Instrument Works – later taken over by Boosey & Hawkes.

So, Camp Fields, or Campfield Road, a street of two halves; homes on the east and businesses on the west.  Although nothing original remains on the railway side apart from a section of boundary wall, there is plenty of activity in the many industrial and business units which trade from here.  And even more trade on the Sphere Trading Estate opposite.