Eighty Years On

 Eighty years ago the residents living in our part of Hertfordshire were relieved to begin the experiences of mopping up World War Two, a process which would engage us all for many years, but at least, so they theory goes, we could look forward to a more peaceful and positive life.

So, here we look back to note a few of the main stories the Herts Advertiser covered during the key year of 1945.  In January the recently published Greater London Plan was discussed and the largest project on the agenda, especially for Redbourn, was the proposal for another of those new towns for Hertfordshire – actually a huge expansion for a small town already on the map: Hemel Hempstead.  The Report also wanted significant expansion east of St Albans, although the proposed limit was set at the outer boundary of Butterwick.  The reason for this location was not stated at the time but later revealed to preserved a green strip to separate from another new town to be attached to an existing community: Hatfield.

The building which had been the focus for military training and army volunteering alike, the Drill Hall, was also the focus for a celebration in January.  Members of the Home Guard, having been stood down from their volunteering roles were given the opportunity to bring their children for a grand party – food permitting – a family "let-your-hair-down" event.  The Drill Hall was at the top of Hatfield Road where today is the Alban City School; the site also served as a bus garage!

An impromptu street celebration in Camp district who were just thankful the conflict was over.
COURTESY THE HERTS ADVERTISER

St Albans was still a dark town and would continue to be so until public street light would, we were told, be switch on once more in July.  Although people had been used to darkened streets since 1940, the state of affairs was an irritation, and a sometimes dangerous nuisance.

One of those street renamings took place at the end of January, for Union Lane, a turning off lower Catherine Street, celebrating the recent Normandy Landings from 1944.  From now it would become known as Normandy Road, the entry to one of the sites of St Albans Hospital.

The bitter February weather encouraged a rare opportunity to skate on the frozen Verulamium lakes.  Although they had been emptied at the start of the war, it is presumed they had been re-filled later, or allowed to refill, otherwise no skating would have been possible.

By Easter everyone with Anderson and Morrison shelters was given permission to dismantle them, although we were reminded that they were all the property of the Government.  Does anyone know whether the shelters were eventually collected?

For some years there would be a shortage of a number of materials and products.  We continued to remain relatively cold indoors as there was an acute shortage of coal, as huge advertising campaigns would attest.

Culver hall was one of so many buildings formerly requisitioned by the military "for the duration".  The hall was returned to its owners in poor condition, but there was an improvement programme; renamed St Saviour's Parish Hall, its functions include dancing and boxing events.  Proper dressing rooms also made it a popular venue for drama.

Trinity Church was a unique organisation in promoting press advertising for its regular services and special events, resulting in large congregations and audiences to fill the building's 750 seats.  People were beginning to feel more confident about "going out" in the evenings again.

Trinity Church hosted events of music, lectures and drama as well as its regular services
throughout the war.  When the Peace came there was no change in its approach.
COURTESY THE HERTS ADVERTISER

The condition of ultra narrow Marshalswick Lane was poor, and would have to join the queue (life was full of queues).  Until that takes place the bus to Marshalswick would travel via Sandridge Road as far as the King William IV public house, Beech Road; passengers having to walk from there.

A proposal was announced to improve the City Station and renew the road bridge to a 64-foot dual carriageway – except that it never happened.

In May St Albans Rural Council published its statistics on the numbers and locations of bombs which had been dropped and casualties since 1940. We need to remember, military personnel were not the only casualties of war.

London Road's Capitol cinema was formally renamed Odeon in June, although the Grand Palace cinema would not yet take its new name of Gaumont for a while.  The Odeon, of course, is still very much alive under new ownership as the Odyssey cinema.

The Grange in St Peter's Street is another property which had been in use by the army and now released, but in "dreadful condition."

St Bartholomew's Hospital (Barts at Hill End) first announced its wish to remain in St Albans.  However, department by department it did return to the City of London and finally relinquished Hill End in the early 1960s.

The Pioneer Youth Club (in more ways than one) acquired The Elms in Upper Marlborough Road; another sign of re-organisation for peaceful times ahead.

The air-raid sirens were taken over by the fire service to call part-time foremen for emergency duty.  Radios were non-existent and there was a considerable shortage of telephone equipment.

Before the end of 1945 new housing programmes had already restarted, depending on the
funding available.  This site was in Hazelwood Drive.
COURTESY THE HERTS ADVERTISER

Discussions began on merging the city's own police force with the county-wide force, a process which would bear fruit in 1948, although it did not find favour with the City Council.

Trinity Church arranged another 'first' with the Odeon Cinema.  The first peacetime Nativity, a 15 minute drama, was performed between two of the films being shown in December.

And in the middle of all this, we stopped to celebrate the end of hostilities on 8th May, and again the following day in support of the many Channel Islanders who had become part of our communities since 1940.

Let's Go To the Park

 Children and families have always much enjoyed making creative use of their local park, whether recreation ground or town park, ever since such places first became available; in the case of Clarence Park since the 1850s when the field next to the Hatfield road was known as the fete field.  In residential areas that might have been when residential  estates were first developed, or when the local council first acquired such facilities, often through the beneficence of wealthy individuals or families. And in general these spaces were for the free use of the public.

View across the recreation park at Clarence Park from Clarence Road.

On the whole the unwritten codes governing such open spaces have been adhered to with little irritation.  When Clarence Park was the sole public open space yes, there were a few conflicts.  Organisers of sports events sometimes found it difficult to cover their costs without charging for admittance.  But, hey, rules are rules, yes? Originally, the football club closed part or all of the park to all from one hour before to one hour after a match; this would have been the gate money, but the club and the council faced a backlash from those who were locked out of enjoying their new park's facilities at times of their choosing.  Even residents living a stones throw from the park gates were threatened with exclusion because they paid their local rates to the rural council rather than the city; a dubious practice fortunately short-lived.

The council's approach since the 1950s has generally been to give precedence to major public entertainment events to Verulamium Park and to relocate successful and growing participatory sports to other venues – the aspirations of a future football club have not yet  been satisfied.  And car parking is not the only consideration.

Promotional view of an Overplay site.
COURTESY OVERPLAY

This background is currently in the minds of many groups and a business known as Overplay has submitted an application for a pseudo "big top" to pitch up in the recreation ground of Clarence Park for a month to (partly) include the schools' Easter holiday, this lasting barely two weeks.  While the active entertainment is undoubtedly both active and entertaining there are a number of conflicts.  The area being booked (but not yet agreed) seems extensive and essentially that part of the park would be privatised for a full month, with access limited to payees. Fully half of the period is covered by the school holiday and weekends, all of which would be charged at £17 per person per session, but their marketing does not specify the length of a session. Is is one hour, two hours? Access to the enclosure and its equipment will be off-limits to children under 100 cm in height.  So parents with children in both height groups will find their time and resources divided.  We wonder whether adult groups are also admitted, and if so,  whether there will be mixed age groups, bearing in mind the operating hours would be between 9am and 6pm.

Promotional activities at a typical Overplay site.
There is not a great deal of detail on the operator's website.
COURTESY OVERPLAY

Certainly, the facility promises to be successful for those families able to afford it; they may even get access to toilets other park users are denied, another facility this blog featured recently.  Added to the potential cost for users promoters are intending to bring their own catering facilities, but users would be banned from bringing into the enclosure food not purchased by the promotor, a nearby shop or at Verdi's for example.  Now, we know that catering, like toilets, is not widely available.  But when we were children we took sandwiches prepared at home, squash diluted in an old bottle, reserving a small amount of cash for an ice cream.

View of the permanent playpark in Clarence Park when first opened by the council in 1921.

The recreation ground certainly proves to be busy when the weather is kind – crowded even.  Families and groups generally enjoying themselves, staying for as long as they wish, and in the spirit of local parks, free at the point of use.  Informal games of catch, softball cricket, French cricket and so on are all part of the family mix.

But there might be an alternative golden opportunity for the promoter as well as the council.  Owners of training grounds and farmers on the edge of the city with a lay field which is resting, and all in the spirit of a former popular entertainment: the circus.  After all, the promotor's indoor facilities are shown as a circus-style big top.  Of course, there is the field often used for outdoor entertainment and pitched big-tops at Westminster Lodge adjacent to the formerly named Muddy Lane  opposite the swimming pool, where there is also generous car-parking provision – one of the facilities which Clarence Park does not have. Of course there would always be Verulamium Park itself.

We hope everyone enjoys something of the facilities provided during the improving weather months, and we trust the pleasure is  "affordable".

Note: at the time of writing the application for this booking has not been confirmed.

Note: The organisation Protect Clarence Park is making a formal objection to placing Overplay in the Recreation Ground section of Clarence Park, and has communicated as such to its members.

Street Plates 2

 Here we are with the second in a collection of indeterminate length, in which we informally let passers by know how many of the roads around our neighbourhoods have specific reasons for their names – rather than random titles from the offices of the council or a private developer.  In case you are late in discovering this series, the street plates shown are for illustrative purposes only and are not part of an actual proposal for the District Council!  Just a different method of highlighting additional information which we might be interested in discovering.

There is no surprise for older readers about the name Hobbs, for Alfred Hobbs launched a motor engineering business in Hatfield Road having taken over from an earlier owner of a similar trade, C M Carter on the same site.  Today Kwik-Fit plys its trade.  Mr Hobbs also joined a partnership to develop an agricultural engineering business known as Tractor Shafts on a site adjacent to Lyon Way at Butterwick.  The company later had another name: Smallford Planters. 

Mr Hobbs created his home along Colney Heath Lane, naturally enough because that is where you will come across Hobbs Close today.  When the Colney Heath site was sold and permission given for housing development it was an easy decision to name the access road from Colney Heath Lane Hobbs Close.  We therefore have a road remembered by today's residents for one of the district's earlier entrepreneurs.

Wider Fleetville – that is houses, and of course, shops built in the first twenty years of the twentieth century between what we now know as The Crown and today's Recreation Ground; this swathe of rural St Peter's having been fields of St Peter's Farm for centuries.  The farmhouse, barns and two cottages were on the lower ground, which we are still familiar with as we walk westwards from the cemetery and descend to the traffic lights.  Behind the farmhouse, in use today by the Conservative Club, the sloping ground which was otherwise difficult to manage, was full of laurel shrubs.  Locals at the dawn of the twentieth century knew this little patch as the laurel bank.

The rear boundary line of the groups of villa houses in Clarence Road did not permit much development space for access in Hatfield Road.  Hence the first side road was very short, a mere nine homes altogether of which four were allowed for on the west side.  It was named Laurel Road because of undergrowth shrubbery of laurels, and this had to be cleared to allow sufficient space for the homes on the west side of the road.

In 1900 there was Woodstock Road (no north or south) beginning at  Sandpit Lane all the way in a straight line to the brand-new Brampton Road.  Then there was Thomas Smith who had laid out a short road for his employees from Hatfield Road to the boundary of the field he owned; this road he named Tess Road (after his own initials).  His field ended where a footpath followed the hedge line; today this footpath is still extant and survives as an alleyway behind nearby houses.  The gap between was a small field which became quickly developed, the linking road being named Princes Road in recognition of the Duke of York's children, Edward, David (to become George VI), Henry, George, and later, John.

These three separate, and separately numbered roads, remained as such until 1948, when Tess Road and Princes Road were combined as Woodstock Road South to follow a single numbering sequence, leaving the significantly longer Woodstock Road to be renamed Woodstock Road North.  At least we know why the suffixes North and South appeared on the street plates, while Princes Road came straight out of the local history books.

Finally in this sequence, the story begins with Wormleighton Road, which looked ok on the developer's map, and provided appropriate acknowledgement to the land owner whose historic family had lived at the early medieval manorial estate of Wormleighton.  Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, the name did not remain popular enough and for long enough for the residents who eventually moved in, though Wormleighton did survive one published version of the Ordnance Survey maps, partly, we suspect because it took so long the open up development along Upper Clarence Road.

We can only suggest that the reason for such a change of mind came because residents of these expensive early homes took a dislike to the name – as a word but not necessarily for its historical context.  Nor are we aware of whose decision it was to steer the name away from the medieval and closer to the more popular; and to be fair the original and the replacement proposal both contained the same number of letters (deliberate or accidental?).  The well-known artist Thomas Gainsborough's death was less than 150 years before a road dedicated to his memory, so more modern than medieval, then!  And the connection? Gainsborough was well revered in the Spencer family.  After all, the reputable artist had produced what was evidently a stunning portrait of the first Earl Spencer.  Naturally, given Spencer's renown in St Albans this was the ideal opportunity to recognise the connection between the medieval Wormleighton and Georgian artistry of Thomas Gainsborough.