Selwyn

This week's group of three featured roads.

 Thousands of us drive along Hatfield Road between St Albans and Hatfield, and give scant attention to the residential district between Smallford and Ellenbrook.  Before the twentieth century there was Popefield Farm on the north side, and Wilkins Green and Great Nast Hyde (GNH) to the south. The house ran a farm at that time, and if you walked south of Wilkins Green Lane, behind GNH, you would find a second farm known as Little Nast Hyde.

Little building in evidence between Smallford and Hatfield in the 1890s.  Here are Great Nast 
Hyde and its farm, and just across Wilkins Green Lane is Little Nast Hyde Farm.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

A photo study of Great Nast Hyde composed and photographed by Arthur Cherry of St Albans
over a century ago.
COURTESY HERTFORDSHIRE ARCHIVES & LOCAL STUDIES

GNH includes Listed Elements on the English Heritage database, but that is not the reason for its inclusion in this week's blog.  Nor is its age of over 400 years.  Nor is the adjacent Little Nast Hyde farm.  However, for much of this time the estate and house was owned by the Kentish family and then a branch of the Hart Dykes; there were other owners as well!

In order to structurally improve the house after a long period of neglect at the beginning of the twentieth century land between the later .... and Ellenbrook Lane was sold for housing development, a golf course and a little railway halt to connect with Hatfield Station.  The development had been interrupted by the First War and in the 1920s estate land was acquired for the building of the Barnet Bypass, now part of the A1(M).

Selwyn College Cambridge

Bishop George Augustus Selwyn
COURTESY ATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

This provided the opportunity to restart the aborted house building and so materialised the sale of the remaining unbuilt land on the GNH estate.  It is believed that it was this sale which became a bequest to benefit Selwyn College, Cambridge.  The connections and chronology is not certain, but Bishop George Augustus Selwyn, having played  key roles in Cambridge and New Zealand, later became Bishop of Lichfield.

Following his death in 1878 a number of Cambridge scholars planned to honour Welwyn's life by establishing a college in his name.  While there were buildings it was not until 1926 that Selwyn changed to become an approved foundation college; and there must have been building works and bursaries associated with such an upgrade status.  We presume that an owner of GNH had been an associate of the college and possibly a former scholar; resulting in the donation of funds from this part of Hertfordshire.

Ordnance Survey 1937 showing the mainly complete Selwyn estate in the centre of the extract,
and the recently begun Poplars estate to the left.  St Albans Road West crosses the top section
of the map.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

The two estates referred to in this post.
COURTESY OPEN STREET MAP CONTRIBUTORS

In view of proposed estate's connection with the college the three roads which comprised the residential development were named Selwyn Drive, Selwyn Crescent and Selwyn Avenue.  One further road, Brookside, was completed post WW2, as was the development on the west side of Ellenbrook Lane, begun in the 1930s and completed in the 1950s.

Selwyn Drive
COURTESY GOOGLE STREETVIEW

Selwyn Avenue
COURTESY GOOGLE STREETVIEW