The most recent 36

 Although the total number of posts now numbers 464 over 13 years – a challenge to complete if you've recently been introduced to St Albans' Own East End – I thought you might welcome a quick resume of the most recent 36.  Not much detail, but there will be sufficient to choose possible favourites.

In January we helped readers as today's post does, to review the best of 2023.  Having got that one out of the way, Bycullah helped with the history of a Fleetville street name where are its earliest shops. Incidentally, there's another Bycullah Terrace in North Watford. Tollgate discovered a road with apparently no tollgates but it did connect, more or less, two such charging points at either end of of Tollgate Road eastwards from Colney Heath.  A St Albans' seed supplying company, XL-ALL, had a very short life because its function was to copycat the company trading policy of Ryder's Seeds, which company moved to shut it down through court action.

February brought us the rare exploration of a road with the puzzling name of origin: Gurney Court Road; then the field Camp Field, which later gave its label to a street name.  We lingered in the same district of Camp to wonder why history erroneously suggested a much older reason for its beginning.  Could it refer to Roman occupation – or not? Spoiler: Not!

March took us on a walk from the previous week's location, along Cell Barnes Lane towards the ancient properties of Cell Barnes.  We moved on to a specially created track, later road, where its present name is no longer New Road. Another unfamiliar location was Chain Bar Toll; which is currently referred to as The Crown.

April: You may have wondered the location of Dellfield, for when you come across it the road is more often bypassed because, as with many other minor highways, it leads nowhere, except in a circle. A quiet anniversary arrived this month, celebrating a 1904 event known as Entente Cordiale: marking an agreement between the UK and France.  Streets are sometimes named at the behest of the builders who bring out of the ground the homes along them.  These are the streets we (or they) named.

Very definitely not pretentious, even in May, we visited Muddy Alley (or Muddy Lane) though it has a very different title today.  You may not have heard of the Selwyn estate; and if not you may not have heard of Mr Selwyn either.  If you like your names and other labels correctly referred to you will also wish others to punctuate appropriately: so is it St Peter's Close or St Peters Close?

In June we made our regular visit to the Hertfordshire Show, which in 1953, arrived at Oak Farm in Cooper's Green Lane.  We laid out our story of London Colney Secondary School, which closed in 1984, and invited readers to fill in some of its gaps.  When the pupils of Beaumont Boys' School made a visit to Fecamp, in the vicinity of La Havre, not more than twelve years after the D-Day landings (D-Day + Twelve), they were within a few short miles of the beaches, without a word of reference ever made to that historic event.  They could have touched the sand but they departed without being introduced.

July celebrated the 60th anniversary of Nicky (Nicholas Breakspear School – Nicky is Sixty Plus) and we traced the history of Catholic education in this city. We peeped back to work out how a plot of land in Brampton Road could achieve making something fit – that something being a school.  The same had become true for another school, often playing catch up with the system; so more of the same.

August: If you can't drive through, perhaps you can by-pass it; which is what became possible in the 1950s if you wished to avoid driving through St Albans.  Back to schools there used to be many more of them, but they were  (it's) private: Oxford House, Rochester House, Manor Lodge, Merrilands, Birklands and others.

September Brought us more private schools: Lyndale, Loreto, Dirleston House and others.  On the roads we have all discovered hills and ill-fitting junctions, and frequently wonder on the ladder jobs.

In the Autumn Fleetville residents gazed as a well-known building gained a topper, or another floor.  It may be rare to discover new old maps, perhaps, but Kitchin in Harts described a different map of the county; also a new (or old) spelling for it!  Developers are occasionally unable to complete their projects, and in Cape and Burleigh we discover a possible reason why.

November arrives and we focus on a character who thought he would do Fleetville a good turn, but in Repeat Performance he also tried at Luton with no greater success.  A building owner in Fleetville (been here before) tried to change its name once, and now wants to try again. Will it be more successful second time round? And at Oaklands we show you how they succeeded in piping a supply to a mansion and farm before the days of a public water supply.

Bringing us up to date we are always wracking our brains to find spaces for new houses – somewhere new to live.  And planning applications are not just for houses but new student accommodation as well.  The year almost closed with recollections via the Herts Advertiser describing key events one hundred years ago, in nineteen twenty-four.

Finally, you don't need to read The most recent 36: you've just done that!

So, enjoy a ramble through thirty-six recent posts during the dying embers of the old year...

In this slight pause between Christmas and New Year warm greetings to all. 

Nineteen Twenty Four

 As we approach the end of the year and as we often gather with friends and family we tend to recall people and events we have shared. The extent of them is largely governed by the age of those who are participating in the game, if that is what it might be called.

It is doubtful if such activity will telescope back a full century; so this is where the first volume of St Albans' Own East End comes in handy. Here, then, is a brief trawl around our city's eastern districts to discover what was occupying people's minds in 1924.

We begin with small fires spotted in two unoccupied buildings by observant nearby residents who were fortunate to find access to a telephone.  First, a Sunday passer by to Nicholson's coat factory in Sutton Road, and the morning after a late performance at the Grand Palace Cinema in Stanhope Road. Neither fire was serious, but both gained a small item in the Herts Advertiser.

Sunday, any Sunday, had a very quiet atmosphere.  Shops remained closed, as were theatres and cinemas.  Even council-owned recreation grounds were closed, or where necessary, children's play equipment was padlocked. A fair proportion of the population attended church and/or Sunday school.  So two young men having a kick about with a football in Camp Lane were apprehended by a duty policeman.  That incident as well was featured in the local newspaper.

1924 saw the removal of the line of trees in Victoria Street at the former home of Samuel Ryder.
Within a short time shops lined the road where the trees had been.

Samuel Ryder, proprietor of a seed firm and donor of what is today a well known golf trophy, had just moved into a house in Clarence Road. While his previous house survives as a small part of Loreto College, preparations were being made to fell a line of trees alongside Victoria Street which had formed the boundary of his garden, replaced by shops at the front, and houses at Marlborough Gate behind.  There was much public disquiet concerning this "improvement".

Clarence Park had opened in 1894, and one of its features had been a bandstand, in the same position as today's structure which is seen in the photo below.  It was a timber structure topped with brushwood, and which by 1924 had deteriorated so badly the structure required replacement. The Council, however, declined to take responsibility for  its replacement.

The Hatfield Road side of Clarence Park had, before 1894, been a field belonging to St Peter's Farm.
It was known as the Fete Field as a number of public events had taken place here.  Those events
continued to take place as the Herts Advertiser reported in 1924.

Completed homes on the Springfield Estate.

A slow start had finally been made in laying out the ground between Camp Lane and Cell Barnes Lane for St Albans' contribution towards World War One's Homes for Heroes, to be known as the Springfield estate. Earl Verulam had agreed to sell his Cunningham Hill Field to the Council for the purpose.  There would be another four years of building before its completion.

August Bank Holiday was always a celebration fete and sports day, and 1924 was no exception.  Such events had taken place even before Clarence Park had been laid out on a field commonly known as the Fete Field.  This open space became the recreation ground of the park and fetes continued to be held there until they were later transferred to the more spacious Verulamium Park.

This wold have been one of many posters put up in advance of Bill Cody's Wild West Shows.
But it was a copy-cast event which arrived in St Albans in 1924, three years after the closure of
the final Buffalo Bill's entertainment.

1924 saw the arrival in town of a travelling show cunningly close in name to Buffalo Bill's famous Wild West Show. It was named Bronco Bill's Wild West Show!  As many circuses and shows did at the time, it pitched up on the Gaol Field, now developed between Camp Road, Alban Way and Flora Grove.  With so little other permanent  entertainment in the town such shows were highly popular. In 1924 residents were just a few years too late to witness Bill Cody's genuine show.  People were beginning to feel its entertainment rather dated, and with a few racist elements too.  But that didn't stop Bronco Bill from attempting a copy-cat version.

Electricity had come to town at the very beginning of the century and the "electric snake" had been buried under pavements in the roads around Campfield Road's electricity station.  In 1924 the NorthMet company planned to extend the cable to envelop an area around north and east St Albans – its precise route is unknown today – in anticipation of future factories and homes.  How excited we must have been!

Since 1921 there had been considerable expansion in the bus services offered, including a new route to a new place called Welwyn Garden City.  But it was also possible to ride from St Albans all the way to Hitchin and Bishops Stortford without changing, suddenly bringing Fleetville very much closer in travelling time.

The sale of Hill End, and to a lesser extent part of Beaumonts Farm had encouraged house building on the south side of Hatfield Road.  Until 1924 housing stopped at Beaumont Avenue and Ashley Road was still a muddy track; the next few years would see see main road growth as far as Oaklands.

Marshalls Wick House remained unsold in 1924, and within a short time the house will have
been demolished and the former private drive will, with a little alteration, have become a
public Marshals Drive.

Several unsuccessful attempts had been made to provide an alternative use for the old Marshalls Wick House.  While plans for laying out roads on the surrounding grounds had begun, but in 1924 the house did not appear to be wanted for anything.

In other parts of St Albans, farmers protested at the poor market facilities in Market Square (the area in front of the St Albans Museum + Gallery).  Two of the three existing railway stations, all called St Albans, were renamed St Albans City and St Albans Abbey; the result of a re-grouping of smaller companies which had taken place the previous year.

Finally, the formal closure took place of the old prison in Grimston Road.  Of course today the front and outer wall looks the same;  the prison cell block removal was the main loss.

Somewhere New to Live

 In recent days two local news stories broke, and both were essentially about places to live, if not places where we live.

There is a general awareness of the huge shortage of accommodation to rent, and also the cost of houses to purchase has, as a matter of course, breached the one million pound mark in a number of districts.  That fact is down, at least in part, to the shortage of houses available for sale, which in turn is exacerbated by insufficient land on which to build, and is constrained by the noose of the Metropolitan Green Belt.  Such is not exactly news to anyone living in or around the city; it is one of life's consequences.  The District Council has attempted to complete satisfactory Plans previously – and each takes several years to complete and then submit to government for approval.

Work on the latest Local Plan which identifies land for future commercial and residential development is now complete and has passed through a public consultation phase.  Beginning in the New Year the Planning Inspector will begin his/her task before, hopefully recommending that St Albans' Council is free to adopt it.

Recent housing: Kestrel Way.

But of course it is not simply a question of identifying ground and thinking of a number.  Future development has to be sustainable and supportable by a meaningful amount of service provision and physical infrastructure.  Hopefully, the future provision will catch up with shortages experienced by growth in previous decades – and without forcing the end price of family homes beyond that which is tolerable.

New housing is not simply a matter of identifying open land on the periphery.  How many times have we walked along a road and convinced ourselves a tiny yard or a long rear garden with some road access will no doubt be converted into a single house, a pair of minuscule flats or a small row of slimline "town houses".

The second news break this week comes from the University, itself creating housing demands of its own.  Older buildings from College Lane are due to be demolished, although their number was not disclosed.  There is a hint that green space between individual structure will in future become an essential consideration of the university landscape, which had not always been evident in former piecemeal expansion projects.

One of the proposed future changes at the university.
COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE

A new medical school will be opened at College Road, while over at the de Havilland campus a business school will be developed.  It seems only recently that the new physics and engineering school building was opened.  Mindful that university buildings are not the only components of university infrastructure, UH has stated currently the number of students number 36,000 and staff total 3,000.  With the new departmental schools the number of additional students being catered for will be 2,000.  It seems clear that in numbers terms the proposals are part of an expansion rather than a change of departmental emphasis.  No mention was made of additional student accommodation on one or both sites.

Although the proportion of the total student population travelling to and from their own homes to Hatfield was not stated, there would be an increased requirement for commercially sponsored student blocks as are becoming more popular in and around centres of learning.

From the 1940s decision to locate the mid Herts secondary technical school in Hatfield, that little seed from the 1944 Education Act has brought forth a thriving university, but of course it does have a space implication!

... and from last week's blog post:

Rubble from the former reservoir tank which served a private water supply at Oaklands.
COURTESY TRIGPOINTINGUK

The  subject of providing a private water supply at Oaklands Mansion and its surrounding farm in the days when Oaklands was detached from the rest of expanding St Albans, has encouraged responses from readers who recall details of the wind pump and tank at the top of a hill on the Oaklands estate.  Comments have ranged from the tank being identified as a "home base" for local children and their games; triangulation markers/benchmarks fixed by map surveyors; and the method by which the disused concrete tank was demolished – recollections include physical breaking up and the use of explosives; perhaps both.  Although the rubble had remained at the top of the hill on the edge of Oaklands Grange housing development until recently, and I had therefore assumed was still lying in-situ, apparently a contractor undertaking clearance operations at the conclusion of building operations had removed the tank rubble as well.  So the last evidence appears to have ... disappeared!  It is also evident that members of an organisation called TrigpointingUK have been keeping watch over this site and regularly photograph changes in the location.  Another reader recalls television filming taking place at the site, and at least one other benchmark on the estate.  Many thanks to those who contacted me, but we are still searching for photographic evidence of the eight sail/blade wind pump atop its structure.  We'll keep looking.