Ballito Anniversary

 One hundred years ago in 1925 the Fleetville district welcomed a new business.  An empty building had been the sprawling printing works of Thomas E Smith and was commandeered by HM Government since 1917, overseeing the tenancy of the Howard Grubb telescope manufacturer.  When that company moved north the spacious factory became empty once more.

This striking building from 1897 had been Thomas Smith's printing works.  In 1925 it became
Ballington Hosiery Mill, home of the Ballito brand.

Within months a fresh name moved in, the Ballington Hosiery Mill, a brand we have come to know as Ballito ladies fashion stockings – and later a range of other garment products.

Advertising posters in the press and on hoardings during the early
twentieth century.

Ballington, with offices and a warehouse in the City of London, acquired and imported cotton ladies stockings from the USA – and the product became even more popular when cotton was supplanted first by silk and still later by nylon.  Following the First World War import taxes were added to a wide range of luxury goods, including the stockings which the brothers Alexander and Charles Cotzin had been bringing in from Tennessee.

Hosiery importers Alexander Cotzin (top) and his brother Charles (above) were responsible
for bringing stocking machines and skilled craftsmen from southern USA to set up
the mill in the former printing works at Fleetville.

In order to circumvent the import taxes the brothers sent skilled engineers to America to source and purchase appropriate machines and equally well qualified machine operators; the intention being to acquire a suitable and empty manufacturing building.  Within months the Fleetville building, where Morrison's Supermarket is today, was being fitted out.  The mill always used the company's trading name, Ballito, although its original legal name, Ballington, was retained, being the Tennessee suburb where its cotton products were historically produced.

The Ballito brand name and typeface became distinctive and near universal from the 1930s onwards.

So far this part of the Ballito account is familiar.  But there is a back-story for the Ballington business which is less well known and deserves to be told for that is also part of local employment and economy, and a level of abuse of labour laws, especially children, still common in the southern states.

The Ballington Mill originated in a suburb of Nashville in a state, Tennessee, awash with cotton mills,  An early mill, the forerunner of Ballington, was at Chattanooga, owned and opened by wealthy philanthropist Edward Gould Richmond (1851-1903).

Child labour at the Richmond spinning  mill in 1910
COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ARCHIVE

The spinning mills were amongst the thriving cotton growing counties, and Richmond's wealth came via the extensive former slave labour used in the plantations.  Labour was plentiful and cheap elsewhere too at the turn of the twentieth century, and most of the mills took advantage for competitive reasons.  Apart from adults, as many children as possible became part of the labour force at "cent rates".  Such illegal arrangements were kept hidden from the factory inspectors by managers pleading their "just helping out" excuses.  Nevertheless low costs fed their way into the regional economies and made mill managers wealthy.

Such an export market made considerable profits for the young Ballito brand in the years before World War One, and enabled the Cotzins to advertise widely in newspapers, magazines, along railway lines and on the developing bus networks.

Post World War Two employment advertising for Ballito.
COURTESY  HERTS ADVERTISER

From 1925 large numbers of residents living in St Albans at the time, including many migrating here from other locations, obtained good employment at the Ballito works over a period of up to forty years.  And it all began here in 1925.

Further blog posts this summer will explore the progress made by Ballito during that period.  Given that the company was shut down in 1967, over fifty years ago, there will be many "east enders" who will have little or no knowledge of Ballito Hosiery Mill whose tall chimney stack announced the mill's presence along Hatfield Road.

What a Mess!

 In the second of our series of posts leading up to the imminent  commemoration of the end of the Second World War I am recalling a few of the rather messy ends to hostilities.  Next month the nation will recall the date as 8th May 1945 – 9th May for those who were residents of the Channel Islands.  We will be celebrating as if on that single day our previously normal pre-war lives will return to how they had previously been.  But just like any major social event on any peacetime occasion, much work goes into the clearing up, returning borrowed items to their owners, conversing with nearby house owners to apologise for excess noise they endured during the event.

A platoon of Home Guard volunteers outside their Central Drive HQ which was hastily removed
to enable post-war housing to proceed apace. Where was this structure removed to, we wonder?

Residents of the East End of St Albans, just as everywhere else, had taken on serious or casual responsibilities if they had not fought on the front line.  So among the equipment which had been shipped to our local communities from government warehouses were basic items such as stirrup pumps.  A few years previously householders had practised the fighting of small fires with buckets, water and these simple contraptions.  So, what to do with them now?  We eventually discovered that, although belonging to the government, we were not required to physically return them to a local collecting point, so  continued to find uses for them in our gardens.

Practising at stirrup pump parties, as they were known.  Just how effective were these hand-operated devices at dowsing a blaze?

Households were supplied with one of two types of emergency shelter back in 1939 and 1940.  One, the Anderson, was for part-burying in our gardens, while the Morrison was a heavy-weight table for the living room, which we could shelter under.  These items too, "property of HM Government" were impractical to return and most of us discovered inventive ongoing uses for them.

Heavy concrete blocks can still be found in odd places, but they were useful in
blocking roads in strategic locations.  Well, they were inconvenient for us and, we
trust, would have been for an enemy invader!

For many months prior to May 1945, normalisation had taken a gradual hold on our lives.  The civilian "Dad's Army", or Home Guard, stood down and had local parties organised for their families.  The uniforms they had worn for up to four years saw further use in their owners' gardens and allotments.  The concrete blocks with their integral metal hooks, which had got in the way of normal road travel had also been removed from the roads leading to the Crown junction, and at Smallford Crossroads.  Community bins which had been set up for householders to dispose of food waste before dispatch to pig clubs, gradually disappeared, as did the piles of sand prepared for creating sand bags to guard against blast.  And while on the subject of blast may companies, schools and other public buildings continued to work round the awkward blast walls in front of external doorways until they could stand the irritation no longer!

Collecting and locally transporting useful salvage materials has always been a feature of
voluntary organisations, including the Scouts, as here at London Colney, although the passenger
seating arrangements today would not be as casual!

Underground and surface street shelters and other utilitarian buildings were locked against "improper uses" in the period ahead.  The rather untidy street scapes of white bands of paint near the bottom of street lamps and key kerb stones, may well have been obliterated but were generally left to fade naturally.  Local authorities themselves were in no hurry to switch on the lights themselves after years of darkness; labour was in short supply, as was the funding for their running costs.  The signs which were removed in 1939 in an attempt to confuse an enemy following invasion, were a challenge to return to their former locations and many never made it – some of the heavier items were simply buried near to where they had been taken down.  Street life was a dour visual experience in many places.

Air raid sirens remained in place until the sixties and continued to function for calling
firemen before the days of universal phones, and later during the Cold War.  In the war
black-out they were just another obstruction to bump into on cloudy nights – the
streets seem to be littered with all sorts of "stuff" which was deemed essential.

No houses had been built since 1940, and many of the damaged properties were repaired ineffectively, or not at all – our chimney stack, having been damaged in a 1940 bomb drop nearby – was not rebuilt until 1948.  In the rush to complete new homes before the imposed 1940 deadline, some of the detailing had been left incomplete and the road surfaces which should have been properly made up were left as the remains of former fields with the minimum of gravel, and f finally being properly completed in the mid 1950s.

In the week around Victory in Europe Day many of the streets were closed for parties; this
one was at Elm Drive.  Some groups combined, but our parents would remind us of 
advanced planning: "I'm keeping this for the street party, so no eating it before the day!"

We continued to buy our everyday requirements with the aid of ration books, sometimes including foods, such as bread, which everyone had eaten without ration throughout the war.  We children had to be patient while we waiting for ration-free sweets until the mid fifties.  Toys in the pre-plastic and battery-free era were rare and expensive.  But the benefit here was that children grew up and could pass on those play items to their younger siblings and friends.

Yes, May 8th (or 9th) was certainly a good reason to celebrate, but it was a period tinged with tiredness and emotional hurt through the loss of family members or friends, a feeling which the whole country continued to experience until that decade had been extinguished.

The 1940s was certainly a very messy decade.

Street Plates 4

 For those of us who have known St Albans for a number of years each of today's street names will be familiar.  Familiar yes, but occasionally can we bring ourselves to locate their whereabouts, visualise their location in our minds, or even know someone, a particular building or style of architecture typical of the area?  We can be forgiven if our recent arrival makes it inevitable that most of the district's roads are yet unfamiliar.

Baker's Close, but not now leading to V A Barrett, the baker's.
COURTESY GOOGLE STREET VIEW

This month's tour begins at Camp Hill, opposite to Dexter Close and where St Albans Rubber Company used to be.  Many of the early 19th century buildings, mainly small dwellings, were demolished earlier in the 20th century and post-World War Two were replaced by the occasional industrial building.  One was the bakery of F V Barrett.

Before the 1960s their bread and cakes were created at the back of their George Street shop.  In fact number 10 had been a bakery at least as far back as the 1850s.  Frederick V Barrett took over the established business c1940 and possibly as part of the post-war business improvements the products were made at the Camp Hill premises.  It seems that the George Street premises changed hands (to Arlow Antiques) at the same time.  How long the Camp Hill bakery survived is uncertain but there are now modern apartment buildings.  The access road to these buildings has appropriately been named Bakers Close – although as is common for street names the label omits the apostrophe!

The long distance trackway from which Marshalswick's The Ridgeway derives its name.

Less today when housing developers are substantial corporations, but in the period up to the 1960s road names offer clues of the origins of the businesses; house builders often being local or at least grew to become moderately sized successful family businesses.  One such which grew substantially between the world wars, brought their expertise from the north London suburbs to St Albans was Thomas Nash.  As a formative small company it made its mark in the Chilterns

A few of the roads in the Marshalswick which emerged from the late 1930s betray their employer's roots from High Wycombe.

It was not uncommon for a lengthy road to be created to link other roads within the residential area's network.  For eighty miles or so between the North Wessex Downs and the Chilterns – Avebury to Aldbury – is the cross country path/trackway known as The Ridgeway. It traverses the landscape and rarely remains level terrain but climbs and descends the chalky hill landscape.  The company, in creating the Marshalswick link road which begins and ends at different points along Marshalswick Lane, adopts the same name: The Ridgeway.

The first section, laid down in 1938 was named The Ridgeway West.  This fell out of fashion post-war as building resumed and names North and South were informally appended, although The Ridgeway was universally adopted for the entire length.

A corner of Highfield's apple orchards.

South Hertfordshire contained a number of mental hospitals from the late 19th centuries and among their commonalities, at least in their early periods, was the acquisition of small farms on the extensive open landscapes about the hospital buildings. The growth of fruit orchards was a connected feature.  None of the hospitals remain in their original forms, having either been demolished or reconfigured into residential accommodation, but one feature retained has been the fruit orchards.  The former Hill End hospital is an example.  Its apple orchards thrive. 

Hill End and its neighbour Cell Barnes have been replaced by the residential developments known as Highfield, and imaginative uses have been found for extensive open spaces, the former and often attractive grounds around the now forgotten buildings.  Highfield Park Trust manage these parklands and related facilities open to the public.

Of the apple varieties found in its orchards seven have been appended into the neighbouring residential roads: St Edmund, Bromley Way, Russet Drive, Grenadier Court, Greensleeves Close, Sturmer Close and Grafton Close.

The village centre at Sutton, Cambridgeshire.
COURTESY GOOGLE STREET VIEW

The sale of Beaumonts Farm began, in sections, during 1899; this to include those fields located south of Hatfield Road. The southern boundary followed the line of Camp Road, while broadly the eastern boundary was a field edge no longer visible but today encloses the Willow estate and the industrial estate which includes Brick Knoll Park.  Over on the west side Beaumonts Farm included the track which became Sutton Road, the second of two tracks which linked Hatfield Road and Camp Road.

The partnership between two well-known men of St Albans sprang into action as this part of the farm was was marketed.  A well-known chemist, Arthur Ekins was clearly the lead partner of the two; the other being Francis Giffin, a solicitor.