Dellfield

 

The loop of Dellfield with its short spurs.  To the right is the cutting of the former Hatfield and
St Albans Railway (Alban Way).  Way up to the left is the parched grass of Cunningham Open
space.  London Road is beyond the top of the picture.
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Recently, this blog told the story of Cell Barnes Lane.  Its northern limit reached Cunningham Hill Farm and the location where the Lane joined Camp Lane, now Camp Road. Go further and we quickly reach a much-changed and complex land layout with the Dellfield residential area at its heart.

For once we can also make reference to the landscape photograph which has always been used as the masthead for the St Albans' Own East End website and this blog.  It was taken from the upper section of Cunningham Open Space, looking above the rooftops of Dellfield towards the city; the heavy tree screen and elevation shielding the view of Dellfield's homes.  Walking along Dellfield itself, and looking upwards towards the photographer, the difference in elevation is remarkably steep.

The 1840 tithe map, to which has been added the names given to the fields at that time. Dellfield
is built on Dell Field and Up and Down Field; Breakspear estate replaces Twelve Acres and
Fifteen Acres; Springfield estate grew from Cunningham Hill Field and Spring Field.
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The same landscape in 1875; still exclusively rural although two railways have now arrived.
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By 1937 the housing is more-or-less as we know it today.  Orchard estate, adjacent to London
Road is partly built (see below).  Only London Road estate on either side of Cell Barnes Lane
is still to come.
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In the mid 19th century much of the land was owned by Earl Verulam and tenanted by Frederick Gough from Cunningham Hill Farm.  The tithe map from 1840  names its fields, including Barn Field and Fox Croft, after which the roads Barn Croft Way and Foxcroft were given their names.  Cunningham Green Space was created from two fields: Barn Field and Four Acres. 

Against the steep hill leading to the hamlet at the crest of Camp Hill was a small broadly triangular arable space known as Dell Field.  It neatly described its form, as one side of a valley side, of which the Camp Hill was a part.  A footpath is still available from opposite the first Dellfield spur; it climbs the hill and crosses over to the former farm via Park Hill Close.  You will certainly appreciate the gradient! At one time a small chalk stream, rising in Marshalswick, flowing towards Fleetville and along where Campfield Road is now created, passed through this dell towards London Road towards River Ver.  The undulating landscape on which the Orchard estate was developed gives us a clue to the irregularity of the topography the stream would have navigated to find its way through this part of St Albans. But evidence of the stream's exact route is missing from maps as it was a watercourse not visible on the surface for several hundred years.

These flats stand at the beginning of the road named Dellfield on a small field called the Dell Field.
Behind them is a steep hill; you will know it if you have walked up Camp Hill.  Also behind
the flats was the St Albans Rubber Works and its associated football field, later to become a
dahlia field for Ernie Cooper of Hatfield Road.
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The road named Dellfield, designed in a long loop, was created c1930, within a long rectangular field which describes the landscape from which it was formed: Up and Down Field.  So, the Dellfield estate was not built on the the field of the same name; that was used to create the access road to reach the housing.  The residential flats built here in more recent times were making good use of the small field which, until then, had offered only a limited contribution to the area's housing.

The Camp Lane and its settlement are on the left, and the Rubber Works when it first arrived
on Corner Acres Field from London Road.  The foreground shows the chalk scarp which
demonstrates the nature of the topography the builders had to contend with
in creating the housing community.
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One short spur on the northwestern length of Dellfield's loop leads nowhere, of course, because the field's boundary coincided with the line of the branch railway from Hatfield, although the field boundary may have been in a slightly different location before the railway arrived.  On the other side of the railway (now Alban Way) Flora Grove was laid on the Breakspear estate.  Although no bridge was created between the two there is much circumstantial evidence of nearby residents making a pedestrian connection between the two estates by means of the railway cutting between the two spurs.

Beyond the Dellfield housing there had been an intention to provide a permanent pedestrian connection towards London Road via what remained of the Half Mile Bottom Field. A footpath was created between two of the houses on the road's southern loop, as evidenced by the 1937 map and the remaining kerb line.  However, the path itself has long since been absorbed into the plot of a neighbouring house.   Clearly, in the early years the route from hear to London Road was an informal but useful link, across what little remained of Half Mile Bottom Field next to London Road as the Midland Bridge strikes obliquely across that road. Doubtless Dellfield residents used the path to reach various work places, or  London Road Station, still open then.  

This field was Half Mile Bottom Field; the map symbols showing closely spaced parallel lines
next to London Road show how the road was cut into the chalk, and therefore the challenge of
turning this field into the Orchard estate – here it is partially complete.  The green line from the
end of Dellfield's loop shows how its early residents could reach London Road.
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Looking towards London Road from above the southern end of the Dellfield loop.  This view
looks towards the Orchard estate.
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The remaining field was gradually built on during the 1930s, and the growing little Orchard estate eventually suffocated access to London Road, the path between the Dellfield homes was closed off.

In a not unrelated issue, three of the original semi-detached houses in Aspasia Close were later demolished to provide sufficient space for a number of flatted homes.  It was only then that this spur of Dellfield was given the separate name of Aspasia Close, an extension of the collection of roads named after a genus of orchids in recognition of the former Sander orchid nursery in the locality.

This post has provided some clue to the human effort required to mould the landscape to our needs of the time, but the story would be incomplete if the wider story of Camp Road, and the forcing of the railway through this landscape, was not also explored; which we will do on another occasion.