The Show

COURTESY HERTFORDSHIRE COUNTY SHOW & AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY

 The majority of counties hold an agri-fest each year, generally under the auspices of a county agricultural society. In Hertfordshire these events began as ploughing matches and gatherings to explore new farming techniques and principles.  The annual gatherings, usually over a single day, morphed into "explainers", in which visitors were invited to visit a site – usually a spare field – to learn more about agricultural practices and the management of animals; farmers showed off their best and classiest farm breeds; and commercial manufacturers showed off the latest machinery.

The larger these events became the more commercial the attractions became, and single day operation was increasingly costly; most, including Hertfordshire now run for two days and on permanent sites where the infrastructure is built in.  A ploughing match launched Hertfordshire's foray into public demonstrations, with a day set aside in the grounds of Hatfield House, with a wider programme a few years later.  The Hertfordshire Show remained in the vicinity of Hatfield, although the time came to experiment with a travelling show; although a decision was made for a permanent site to be opened for 1962 at Friars Wash.  For such a move Hatfield would have been more central, while Friars Wash was perched close to the Bedfordshire border.

An aero photo survey plane happened to be in the east of St Albans on show day 1953. Tree-
lined Coopers Green Lane slides past Oak Farm – Beech Farm lies on the opposite side of the
lane.  The junction with Sandpit Lane is in the distance.  The large show ring is in the centre,
but absent then are the large car parks!
COURTESY HISTORIC ENGLAND

The buildings of Oak Farm today.  In this shot Coopers Green Lane is on the right.
COURTESY GOOGLE EARTH

During the peripatetic period, 1953, a field was loaned at Oak Farm with its road access along Coopers Green Lane.  The various negotiations required for acquiring a site during the middle of the crop growing season would presumably be complicated and I can only presume an opportunity was available in this particular case with the sale of the farm by Robert Paterson and its acquisition by the aircraft company, de Havilland.

In the period before mass car usage attracting large numbers of paying customers for this one-day show would always be a challenge in the countryside.  Although close to St Albans, the site was distant from main roads which entertained regular bus routes or had the capacity for a sudden surge in traffic movements.  I have no idea whether special buses were laid on from St Albans and Hatfield but such an arrangement would have been a distinct advantage.  Two photographs from the Herts Advertiser suggested there were a number of school visits.

Charles Evans and Peter Mott from their school, thought to be Beaumont.  The name
of the foal was Easter Pride.
COURTESY HERTS ADVERTISER

Children from Gascoyne Cecil School, Hatfield touring the sheep pens.
COURTESY HERTS ADVERTISER

But we should remember that the County Show was a Thursday event close to the May Bank Holiday but still a working weekday.  The notion of using a Saturday (later in more enlightened times Saturday and Sunday) had not yet dawned.  Thursday was also a school day which would have been a further hindrance to family visits.  

I was nine years old at the time and lived within a reasonable distance of the show ground; yet I have no recollection of the Show at Oak Farm.  I can therefore presume that, compared with today, the profile of the event and the publicity surrounding it was less intense than is expected today, although I always recall boards by the verges and field fences along main roads announcing the forthcoming Hertfordshire County Show at ... followed by the date and location.

So, in 1953, it was the turn of the East End of St Albans to host what has probably become the largest annual open air event in the County.

That was sixty-five years ago!  Did you attend then, and have you returned, probably to the permanent show ground, since?

Today's County Shows are as much the presentation of entertainment and big yellow machines, as
it is with animals, competitions and food.
COURTESY HERTFORDSHIRE COUNTY SHOW & AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY

              

D-Day + Twelve

 It is now a frequent and regular occurrence  for groups of secondary students to make journeys to the major battlefields and cemeteries of Europe, as they learn and experience the landscapes and events of the European wars of the twentieth century. It marks a very different perspective on war and the wastage of human life.

In 1956 students from Beaumont Boys' School undertook a journey to France. Until the last minute there was some conjecture about whether the journey should proceed; there had been a number of student riots in Paris which had concerned our parents.

Boys from each year group participated. Among the staff were our French teachers, although the opportunities to advance our French conversation were very limited.  There was certainly a cultural and geographical element, with the first week spent in Paris, lodged in a residential school and visiting all the usual tourist locations.   We then removed to the coast, not far from the ferry port of La Havre, the small town of Fecamp; again staying for a few days at a rather smaller residential school within its stone boundary walls.

A calm and long-cleared coastal zone today.  Beyond the distant headland and the mouth of the 
Seine are the line of five beaches where D-Day played out in 1944.

Yes, there were visits to nearby locations, but also rather more "free time," and since it was a coastal location partly projecting into the Channel and with – almost – a view into the mouth of the river Seine, much time was spent on the beach, in the shallows, and exploring the cliff tops, former gun emplacements and pill boxes.  Just below the steeply descending cliffs was a little port; lots of little fishing boats.

I returned home with a number of strange visual recollections: sunken caissons swamped by the tides and lying at varied scattered angles; barricaded sections of beach with warning notices against entry – the typical explosion and skull & crossbones signs; concrete contraptions intended to prevent boats coming ashore.  What were all these strangers to seaside holiday locations?  Either I had not been paying attention, or surely, we were missing something.

"The War" had not been referred to at all during our stay; no opportunity to bring to our attention the events that had occured just over a decade earlier.  It was as if the events of D-Day had not taken place; as if we were not standing as close as was practicable to where the battle for the free world was being determined.  A coach, a map revealing the road down to the Seine Bridge would have brought us towards the coastal communities and their beaches which today we have come to know from many commemorative ceremonies as Sword, Juno, Gold – and in the further distance – Omaha and Utah.  We had come this far, and a day's coach journey and beach lesson from our teachers would have shown us so much.

Gold was the name given to the third of the landing ground beaches, eighty years later.

The reason for such an omission was probably entirely understandable at the time, twelve years on.  Perhaps it was too close for the families of our teachers; too close for the dissemination of the event's minutiae of details.  Perhaps the mammoth nature of D-Day, its secret planning, its background; and the resulting aftermath, was still being played out in the memories of far too many people.

We should also remember that it would still be a further six years before the world knew anything about The Landings through the three-hour mammoth movie The Longest Day.  So,  the D-Day landings played no part in our education while we sojourned on the Normandy coast. Forty teenagers of the Fifties who instead were being taught that  the world needed to forget the recent past.  To us The Longest Day was just another war movie, and our parents had to remind us that it really did happen and husbands and fathers did not always return.

The beaches as 6 June and its aftermath played out, as envisioned in the 1962 film The Longest Day.

London Colney Secondary School (revised)

 

Revised copy with additional map, and text in italics 25 June.

Here is an unusual post because it features London Colney marginally outside of our East End.  And it refers to an event just a few years before the closure of the village's Secondary School.

Until the 1980s there were few secondary schools located in any of the county's villages.  In the south of the county there were three: Redbourn, Wheathampstead and London County; four if Kings Langley is included, but that school still thrives  Most of the other villages in the days of Elementary Schools lost their senior pupils to existing or new senior – later secondary – establishments in nearby towns.

Apart from the array of cars, this is what the building always looked like from the Alexander Road
entrance.  In the 1960s there were more staff bikes in the bike shed than staff cars at the kerbside.
COURTESY LONDON COLNEY BUSINESS CENTRE

A recently available map series from 1968 now provides a new step in the change to building arrangements at the school.  Further references to this map are added in italics to the original blog.

A newly published map from 1968 was not available when this blog was first published. It
confirms the gymnasium and changing rooms were in top right section, and the former ROSLA
temporary classroom building was in area B in the aerial photo below.  Are we correct in
suggesting a caretaker's house was within the long rectangle in the top left area of the map?
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

London Colney Secondary closed in 1984, although the buildings are still in use as a business centre.

We know that the senior school was built on its Alexander Road site in two phases shortly after 1928 and in about 1932.  The next building to arrive was c1946 in the form of a temporary two-classroom structure, to prepare for the school leaving age uplift from 14 to 15.  These structures were known as ROSLA classrooms (Raising Of School Leaving Age). The 1968 OS revision indicates this building was in location B in the aerial map below.

The next arrival was in c1962; a gymnasium and changing rooms, the former changing rooms adjacent to the assembly hall then being converted into a small library. The 1968 OS revision indicates the gymnasium and changing rooms were in location A but the rectangular building outline was perpendicular to the car park now on the right of A.  This car parking area was the tennis courts.

Alexander Road curves around the lower left corner, and Parham Way is laid out top-bottom near
the left edge.  The primary school is out of view on the left.  For those who recall the school, though perhaps not the current layout, will be able to identify the quadrangle or green space in the
centre of the existing classroom layout.
The letters may help readers to identify particular teaching areas they remember at the time
they may have attended the school.
COURTESY LONDON COLNEY BUSINESS CENTRE

Most villagers who are long-term residents will probably have recalled   a serious fire c1980 centred on the assembly hall.  The current aerial photograph (see above) reveals that the original pitched roof structure of the hall has been replaced by flat roofed accommodation, but is this the replacement hall or was it transformed into, perhaps, a dining room or teaching area?

Two other separate building extensions were completed in short order and formally opened by Gordon Beningfield in May 1981.

One was on the North-West side of the building and replaced the former small ROSLA building (though the school probably had a different name for it). Part of it looks as though it might have included a Welcome area and Administration, but the remainder of this substantial structure had another function or functions, whatever they might have been.

The remaining separate building was on the South-east side playground.  It was undoubtedly a specialist teaching building; perhaps science or technology.

One more building which does not appear on the aerial photograph: the gymnasium and changing rooms added to the school estate c1962.

The writer taught at the school in 1963-4 and is fairly certain the new gymnasium occupied a plot on the edge of the playing field and which now  appears to have become a demolished section of the site on the south side of Parham Way.  It does seem strange that this potentially useful community resource was not saved for further use. The demolished block is visible at the top of the aerial photograph.

Press photo taken in 1932 on completion of the second phase of building work, which
formed the complete school as it remained for the next nearly fifty years.
COURTESY HERTS ADVERTISER

Photographs of the school's buildings are also in short supply, and I would ask readers of this post who have any such examples to reply below.

In particular anyone who can add to, or correct, information given in this post is urged to get in touch.