Street plates 1

 We have previously run a few items about the age of streets in the East End district.  They have been irregular very occasional and quite detailed.  This year we will return to the topic and identify a number of the district's roads but in a briefer form – sufficiently short that we all may stand a chance of actually remembering the key information.  For example, last year a street plate was created on screen – this one; you may remember it:

The style does not appear on any street plate in St Albans, but is increasingly appearing in a number of locations, particularly where new suburbs are appearing where there are formerly historically important roads and/or properties.  Very often postcodes are added and perhaps geographic labelling  to inform about the boundaries of local communities.  The street plates which appear in these regular, monthly blogs are more inventive than actual.  But the target has been for a road, once identified, to have its context explained in no more than two lines occupied by the sign as it might have appeared at each end of the road.  So, the example above was one you have seen previously.  Below begins the new series.

A residential road off Camp Road was developed on land previously owned by Friederick (to use the original Germanic spelling) Sander, the "Orchid King". This, and other roads nearby, are named after varieties of orchid which the nursery bred and sold.  Comfortably within two lines of print.

It is people's names which are the most difficult to appreciate in a street plate.  A small Oaklands cul-de-sac from the 1970s feels quite homely to its residents.  The rest of us may struggle to place a context to the name, but Michael Gresford Jones spent twenty years as the sixth Bishop of St Albans.  This sign also squeezes in a little additional phrase telling us what Bishop Gresford Jones went on to do in his retirement.

Hedley Road is a not very straight street between Sutton Road and Ashley Road.  It is on land which was once owned by an industrial manufacturer of overcoats. Alfred Nicholson also wanted to attract other manufacturers to his plots of spare land nearby.  It was his prerogative, as the land owner, to name the road after his son – keep it in the family!

 

As with the orchids earlier the same theme can link more than one road.  This is also the case on the London Road estate where a former Admiral George Rodney is named on one road and the location of a key historical event he was associated with – Cape St Vincent –  nearby. The theme is Admirals of the Fleet, but individual persons don't necessarily have a connection with St Albans.

More street plates coming up in February.