Piping a supply

This blog is all about Oaklands which these days is a very busy place, especially in term time as it is one of the homes of Oaklands College.  Most of us know it historically as the home of Oaklands Mansion, but I am sure most residents of the St Albans' east end districts have never seen it, hidden, as it is, by copious numbers of trees.  So, here it is to start off today's post – although it doesn't look like this in 2024.

An early pastoral scene of Oaklands Mansion. much is it would have inspired its first owner,
William Knight.
COURTESY HERTFORDSHIRE ARCHIVES & LOCAL STUDIES

 I was shown a version of a 25 inch map recently, specific to Oaklands, and discovered on it a feature which is not normally found on standard Ordnance Survey maps.  The map was published in 1919, timed to coincide with the sale of Oaklands Park by Hampton & Sons, Land and Property Auctioneers, at the behest of the County Land Agent.  Two elements were additional to the original Ordnance Survey: an area of 315 acres enclosing the Park was treated with a green colour wash, and the feature property, Oaklands Mansion, was highlighted in red.  The other addition was a network of black lines reaching out in several directions from the Mansion and its outbuildings, and labelled "approximate line of water pipe".  This network was limited to the Park area and was therefore self-contained, not connected to a public supply, for example, along Hatfield Road.

Oaklands Mansion (coloured red) and adjacent buildings – including its home farm homestead – 
as shown on the auctioneer's map of 1919.
COURTESY OAKLANDS COLLEGE ARCHIVE

In this section of the map the Home Farm homestead from the first map is now bottom right, 
and the long straight line identifies the "approximate line of water pipe".

Not surprising really for the beginning of the twentieth century, as there were few buildings of any kind eastward of Fleetville whose nearest and most recent homes barely reached where Queen's Court is located today.

In fact, the first owner of the nearest supply of fresh water, William Knight, would have been living on top of his very own well supply in the basement of the Mansion itself; a source which undoubtedly predated its early nineteenth  century construction and served the three dwellings (Threehouses) which had been so close to where the front of the Mansion was intended.  No doubt the structural condition of these three dwellings was poor and generally "got in the way" of the new house.  We can only speculate on the approximate age of the well, and as with many wells was probably deepened on occasions as the water table required.

When the water supply network was probably first laid in the late 19th century it was to better serve the Mansion and nearby kitchen gardens.  Such an improvement may have been in the time of Charles Dymoke Green.  One can imagine how an extension to provide a water supply to one or two of the nearby fields came a little later as the usefulness of a pipeline network became clear.  So, two branches were dug into the ground to the edge of fields east of the Mansion behind the small Hatfield Road fields, and close to the orchard and poultry area north of the kitchen gardens.

The long pipeline from the previous map eventually reaches the highest location of the
Park where a wind pump and tank (reservoir) was sited.  The pipeline was extended
westwards to serve Beaumonts Farm, though not Beaumonts cottages.

These feeds were gravity fed from a long section of pipe to a deep well on the highest point of the Park, where stood a wind pump, although the map labels it as a windmill.  This stood atop a tank, or reservoir – the map uses the latter term, although this was demolished once the house and park were connected to the public supply.

There is some confusion about the terminology: is a windmill or a wind pump?  Mills are often the favoured term, unless it is a mechanism for using wind power to directly lift water from below ground for storage and later consumption.  These are generally simpler mechanisms for use in remote landscapes on farms, often with up to eight blades, as at Oaklands.  Other definitions are available!

To transport the collected water gravity is used but the length of pipe from the pump to the Mansion and eastern fields was considerable.

Beaumonts Farm homestead when the pipeline reached it. The building was located close to the
junction of Woodland Drive north and Central Drive.

Once Mr Fish had acquired Beaumonts and it was realised its farm was still reliant on a well near the homestead – close to the junction of today's Central Drive and Woodland Drive, and the inefficiency of the supply was recognised, Fish had a separate pipeline connected to the hilltop pump.

The new pipe descended east-south-easterly towards the park boundary.  It would have been known in 1919 that Oaklands' interest in Beaumonts Farm was of limited duration; it was already gradually being broken up for development.   So there was no need to inform potential purchasers of the Park what lay below ground beyond the boundary.  Only the Park was for sale. The probable route across Beaumonts land was directed along field boundaries and through woodland tracks, the final leg traversing what is now Central Drive.  It is possible some of the water supply fed existing ponds at the Woodland Drive junction, the site of the former moat.

For most of their very early histories the moated house and manor house were undoubtedly served independently, from the nearby stream at the foot of what is now Eaton Road, and then a well, at least once deepened, near to the homestead where Irene Stebbings House is located.  We are informed that the supply was not of certain quantity to serve the tenant farmhouse, and so was deepened once more.  

A disagreement flared when the land agent arranged to the Beaumonts water supply to be charged for since the farm house and Beaumonts Farm were no longer part of the Oaklands estate and were due to transfer to new ownership, Herts County Council, in 1919.  Tenant Mr Coombs refused to pay for the piped water, and decided instead to call in the professionals who deepened his well once more.  And that is where the matter rested until demolition of the farm house in 1938 for the Beaumont north estate development, the well being permanently capped. 

Yes, Oaklands Grange is now full of houses, but the circled spinney hides the former location 
of the wind pump and its reservoir.  Here is the highest point of the former Park.

The pipeline itself may no longer be visible and the pump contraption is long gone, but we can trace where it had been.  And those who can do so most easily live at Oaklands Grange, on the south side of Sandpit Lane.  Walk up Osprey Drive from Sandpit Lane.  Where its name changes to Eagle Way, turn eastwards to face a shrubbery not cleared for housebuilding.  You may still find pieces from the former tank which stored water pumped by wind from the aquifer below the highest location of the park.  Present residents will be aware of the wind strength near the top of this exposed slope.  That was just the right location for a wind pump!