A Muddy Alley

 This week's blog is very different; it may have a couple of street plates, but if many vehicles use it – which they don't – there will be comments about the surface, and flooding occasionally.  Signs inform about privacy, for this is not a publicly maintained road.  It should have sported the name Central Drive, for that was its intended name, or so the maps promised from 1929.  But World War Two reared its vicious head while the Beaumonts building estate was only partly complete.  So the road which should have begun at Oakwood Drive barely reached Beechwood Avenue by 1945, and children of the time could continue what they had had always enjoyed; jumping in puddles, exploring the thicket, at Christmas collecting holly, and taking their usual shortcuts through the muddy alley to Beaumont Avenue.  It wasn't really a short cut; just as long or short as any other way to where we wanted to walk or cycle.  But it was far more interesting; far more of a mini adventure, and the lane was called the Muddy Alley for good reason at times.  And still is!

Farm Road from the Beaumont Avenue end.  Though thicketed on each side the track has probably
never been wider than we see it today.

 

Because it is a privately owned route many nearby residents are still unaware of post-war detached and semi-detached homes down there somewhere in the darkened lane!  Even during the earlier days of the new estate Beechwood and Beaumont homes with sizeable gardens had made arrangements for accommodating future homes which might line what became known as Farm Road, even though they had not originally been intended; just like Harptree Way, lined only by the rear gardens on both sides.  But there are today four homes embedded on either side of Beechwood and Beaumonts properties.

Farm Road from the Beechwood Avenue end, although before the 1920s it extended as far
as halfway along the western end of Central Drive.  Indeed the farm lane was intended to be named
Central Drive right through to Beaumont Avenue. 

The farm quoted in the title of the lane was Beaumonts Farm which stood until 1938, approximately where Irene Stebbings House in Woodland Drive now stands.  The lane or track, which of course still branches at right angles off Beaumont Avenue and is still as thickety as it always was, although until the houses came it was rather longer, opening up once more where the electricity sub-station in Central Drive now is.  For probably a thousand years or more men and women have trodden their way to work the land, driven their horses, ridden their carts from the time since our forebears first ploughed the land, taken their crops to market or traded with others nearby.

Beaumonts Farm homestead demolished 1938 to permit a start on new homes in Woodland Drive
north, although it would be another eight years before most would proceed, halted by the Second 
World War,

The previous farmhouse and Manor House drawn c1800 shortly before its demolition.  The
foreground with a little jetty is a moat inside which was an even earlier building of probably
mid mediaeval age.  Remains of the moat were still evident before laying out the houses on the
corner of Central Drive and Woodland Drive south.
COURTESY HISTORIC ENGLAND

Before the farmhouse was built in the 1830s there had stood the former 17th century manor house close to Central Drive and Woodland Drive south; and before that an even earlier medieval house lay protected inside the arms of a moat.

As our forebears had started out on a journey, with fresh water from a spring or the well, or even from the stream where Eaton Road is now just about dry, their trek or ride would have led them along an ancient route way across country on or off the chalk and bisecting tracks or later roadways, leading in other directions.  First from the left would have been the roadway towards Bishops Hatfield and Ely, and later the way to London.  Leaving Beaumonts on the right a traveller could first have reached the Roman Verulamium and pre-Roman settlements to the north and all manner of trading places and manorial headquarters in between.  

1946 aerial photograph showing Beechwood Avenue, the white
road to the right. Farm Road and the western end of Central Drive
cross the centre of the photo.  On either side of the lane is land
not yet developed (see also map below).
COURTESY HISTORIC ENGLAND

Ordnance Survey 1939 survey illustrates the undeveloped land shown in the aerial photo
above.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

How people communicated, settled and traded a thousand years ago may have been very different, but communicate, settle and trade they did.  Had we have lived in the 16th century within striking distance of the farm lane and the ancient track, we may have been aware of the Manor House and its barns and stores which held a strategic and defensive significance; Thomas Cromwell, or at least his men, were regular visitors to maintain a fair number of horses at the ready here and in other nearby locations in case of insurrection or trouble from the wider region.

Beaumont Avenue (or simply The Avenue) taken in the first decade of
the twentieth century, but the route as a cross country track has a
heritage extending back millennia, long before land was brought into
cultivation; before even permanent settlement.
COURTESY ST ALBANS MUSEUMS

We who today live in our residential area of Beaumonts, great in number though we may be, whether freemen and women or serfs and occasional travellers or traders, their domestic accommodation was scattered and were subject to the community rules and laws governed by manorial lords from the manor before more settled and uniform local government became the norm.

Our local communities have come a long way in the past one or two millennia and we would not recognise our district's past in any shape or form today. But we still walk the former lane to the farm, called Farm Road; and following much rain possibly still known as Muddy Alley.  Names stick, just like the mud and wet chalk!