Finding A Way

As a prelude to a new monthly series of posts on the rough-and-ready process of creating a community in our East End it might help to explore the circumstances individuals, builders and others began to occupy the "empty areas" beyond the established town, the boundaries of which had barely reached the foot of the town hill in Victoria Street in 1879.   In the nineteenth century town our forebears would have been able to perambulate along the streets, thoroughfares and cut-throughs past and between the buildings of the built-up areas.  Beyond these there were only the roadways leading to distant towns, more immediate villages and narrow lanes which passed farms, and reinforced by an informal network of footpaths and trackways, many of which had been in existence for as long as the land had been worked.

But in that mix not all paths were freely available, perhaps including what we might call today permissive routes, across fields or through farmyards.  Let's walk along 1880s road towards Hatfield.  We might have begun our journey from one of the cottages (no longer extant) close to Camp Hill hamlet.  

On our invented journey on foot we reach the privately owned track, now named Sutton Road, at Hatfield Road; our aim being to reach Dead Woman's Hill, now St Albans Hill, Sandridge. As many readers will already know the little building on the corner, recently closed in 1880, the rat-infested toll house. We walk eastwards along the toll road itself until reaching a junction of two footpaths and a private road. 

The toll road (until 1880) between the toll house on the left to junction to the far, top
right.  The footpath to St Peter's is the double broken line at the top.  Today this section is 
The Alley between Beaumont Avenue and Woodstock Road South.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

The first footpath would take us in the wrong direction; it crosses a field and leads travellers towards St Peter's Church. The road (today called Beaumont Avenue) is gated and is the official access to Beaumonts Farm; at the far end are the farm's labourers' cottages and just beyond the northern gate is Sandpit Lane which would be convenient for our purpose.  However, we have no key to either of the locked gates, the wide cart ones or the narrow pedestrian one.  You would have to request permission from the land owner, Thomas Kinder.

Close-up of the first map's junction.  The brown road is Hatfield Road; the track to St Peter's is 
on the left while the beginning of the path crossing the farm is the righthand arm of
a V shape at the top.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

The remaining option would be a footpath to the right of the road gate, accessible via a stile at a gap in the hedge line. The footpath would lead you past the farm towards Sandpit Lane along the edges of fields. Today we might think of our route as being Beechwood Avenue but is was a little further east and close to where a phone box was one sited close to the first house in Beaumont Avenue.  

The remains of the Avenue's South Gate after it had become disused.

The stile giving access to the to the farm footpath, to the right, out of
view, of the gate in the previous photograph.
COURTESY ST ALBANS MUSEUMS

As the path led closer to the farm we would have passed, on the right, the remains of the former Manor House and almost immediately reach the private road to the farm homestead itself – today's extension of Farm Road – which we would cross and almost immediately reach the farmyard wall.  The path would continue northwards, passing a narrow pedestrian gate into the yard. We would next encounter the junction of three fields where our path forces us to turn left and then right a few yards further on.  

The farm complex is on the right; the farm road crosses the
map L to R; the broken line of the footpath passes the farm
between top and bottom.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND

The farm homestead protects by the stone wall in the below photograph.
COURTESY RACHEL TRAVERS

The footpath as it passes the farm (out of view to the right). The young men are walking
southwards towards Hatfield Road.
COURTESY RACHEL TRAVERS

At the turn of the century a small temporary corrugate iron cottage would be perched at this junction for a farm labourer's family.  However, for now, we continue until we reach a lane, Sandpit Lane.  Ahead we would have limited permission permitted to continue until  today's Jersey Lane. To continue in earlier times we would have possibly taken a risk by walking along the private drive belonging to the Marten family who owned the land.  However,  Marten, who had been irritated by commoners passing the frontage drive of his house,  obtained permission to have a lane built – he named it New Road, which became Marshalswick Lane – which enabled commoners to travel with or without animals or carts, until they reached the St Albans Road between the town and Deadwoman's Hill leading down to Sandridge.

Our journey complete we had been seriously limited in preparing our route by the permissions required by successive land owners and their relative benevolences.  Needless to say, many travellers took their own risks! 

Although improvements were gradually made as the new century dawned, this was the route taken by children living at Newgates Farm and its surrounding cottages in walking to and from their school in Camp Lane, once the new St Peter's Rural Elementary School was opened in 1898. Now called simply Camp School, this was a huge step forward for children living in the rural east end where formal education had previously been sporadic. Soon after the school's  opening parents from Newgates were taken to court for failing to send their child to the school even after extensive falls of snow made the journeys impractical.

Life on Beaumont's Farm gradually changed following the death of landowner Thomas Kinder, and a few years later sections of Beaumonts were sold, the farm homestead and remaining fields were rented out, and eventually, instead of growing crops the land grew houses.

65 and Counting

 Are there any books written about St Albans?  Yes, I know of about 65 and there will be several others, not all will be available to buy, or even to borrow at the library, but they will have been written and published at some time.  Occasionally, a title might be available from sources such as Abe Books.  For others you may struggle to locate a title.

To trigger your memory why not begin with https://www.stalbansowneastend.org.uk/more/books-about-St-Albans/ 

This link will take you to the first of two pages illustrating the covers of 65 titles, and in most cases the ISBNs by which they may be located.  Even if your local library does not hold a copy, it may be able to bring one to you via the inter-library lending service.  Of course there will be tiles which predate the ISBN system, but that's progress for you!

Many of the covers shown will be familiar; others will be freshly new.  You will also realise a few covers give you the impression artistically of being dated.  

Three of the four titles illustrated below are newly published in 2025, while one, new to this website, had been published back in 2016 – plenty of time to become familiar with at book shops or in the Local shelf at St Albans district branch libraries.

We'll begin with a pocket-sized book published a few years back:       St Albans History Tour by Robert Bard.  And it genuinely is a pocket-sized little package.  Possibly readers will be more familiar with the same author's St Albans Through Time.

The locations will be familiar but the photo editing including selective closeups of many of the early twentieth century postcard views, have produced fresh perspectives of groups and individuals within the street scenes portrayed.   Many of the images have been given a high contrast treatment which suggest to us that we are looking at something quite different. The book contains an absolute minimum of text, and although the same could be said of many of the "little books" portraying the city, in this case the small blocks of text are also brightly bold.  The author does not wish to present the images only to be supported by a label taking second place on the page. Hooray! the mini-volume also finds space for an annotated map. Published 2016 Amberley ISBN 978-1-4456-5761-5.

In The Secret War in St Albans 1939-1945 Michael Barbakoff takes readers on a visit to a number of buildings commandeered during the Second World War for use in signals intelligence and special operations.  He identifies the nature of the research undertaken at each location.  For readers with little knowledge of these matters a more comprehensive list of the operational organisations, their codes and other abbreviations, might help us in our understanding, but the author presents us with a comprehensive list of other sources that we, his readers, might find useful.  

This title is a handy companion to Pamela Shields' Hertfordshire Secrets and Spies published by Amberley in 2009.  Published 2025  Amazon ISBN 979-82839-2983-6.

A book appears to be "authentic," it seems, if its cover portrays a photo of the Cathedral taken from Abbey Mill Lane. St Albans A Potted History by Valerie Shrimplin has such a picture on its cover! 

Glorious colour photographs and concise chapters take us through historical time in fewer than 100 pages.  So, a history of St Albans in a couple of hours.  As you might expect from this blog we would highlight any references to our East End, and in this book there are just two: the former prison entrance, and an advertisement for a coat from Nicholson's old factory in Fleetville.  But we would certainly recognise every other building, and each would surely be on a route the City Tour Guides would visit. Commended for its range of photographic subject matter, and the viewing angles chosen. Even both sides of a Roman Ver coin.  Well done to the photo editor!  Published 2025 Amberley ISBN 978-1-3981-2083-9.

What can we say of St Albans and Western Hertfordshire in the British Civil Wars 1642–51, other than the length of its title?  Oh, and the author line; its contributors were John Morewood, Nick Martin and Gill Girdziusz.

This is growing into a delightful series of Concise Histories, beginning with Mistress of Gorhambury Lady Anne Bacon and then St Michael's Village from rural settlement to residential suburb 1700–1930 – more lengthy titles!  These titles are introduced in no more than 50 pages which do constrain the telling of the story.  You don't need to hunt for details of the Civil Wars connection with St Albans and the answer to the question why?  In one small-format and concise account the authors have presented an essential account in one place.  Well done to the publishers St Albans & Hertfordshire Architectural & Archaeological Society; another lengthy title!  Published 2025  SAHAAS ISBN 987-0-9011-9426-8.

Street Plates 10

 Six more street plates around our East End to ponder over, perhaps as we sit on a boundary wall at the end of a road waiting for a friend to turn up.

No legend being alluded to here, but the loyalty of a friend being rewarded.  Arthur Road is at the Eastern end of Bycullah Terrace, the range of little shops opposite Morrison's supermarket.  But when these shops, and the cul-de-sac road known as Arthur Road, were first built at the turn of the twentieth century, the name Fleetville hadn't even been invented.  However, Thomas E Smith had a printing works in a little turning off Fleet Street, London's former "newspaper road".  He wanted to expand into colour printing which required more space – a lot more space – and chose a site in the fields on the east side of St Albans.  Its sale would benefit the St Albans School. The two men Smith chose to take charge of the new colour works along the road to Hatfield were Ernest Townson and works senior manager Arthur W Hall.  

Arthur W Hall

The "printing village," or Fleet Ville is it was first known, would have  consisted of about five residential roads had it been completed, but Smith lived to see three of them begin; what happened to the others is another story.  

However, the first was named in honour of the works senior general manager, Arthur Hall.  It is often assumed that employees and their families of the works were the sole tenants, but such was the number of homes being built in the vicinity at the time, Smith's new employees had many options open to them and therefore Arthur Road's homes were equally open to employees of an increasing number of other factories and workshops in the district.  

It didn't take long for the above printing works to become surrounded with other residential roads, and one site on the edge of the former Beaumonts Farm lay between Hatfield Road and the branch railway and named Castle Road – from the nick-name, Rats' Castle, given to the recently closed turnpike toll house nearby.  Councillor, manufacturer and developer Horace Slade purchased much land off Hatfield Road and now also purchased smaller sites adjacent to Castle Road, one of which, with the consent of St Albans' Council, was named Cape Road.

The turn of the twentieth century saw a number of roads in many parts of the country named in recognition of the British success following the conclusion of the two Boer wars in South Africa.  The Cape referred to was the Northern Cape.

As with Arthur Road in a city like St Albans assumptions about street names often jump to Royalty and titled families.  But the location of Edward Close offers another suggestion since several of the streets in the area surrounded the former orchid nurseries.  They are often species of orchid or the specialist plantsmen who have made rare plants famous or popular.  In this case keeping records of the names and natural environments of species, the books or registers gradually becoming more organised, and pre-eminent was Edwards' (or Edwards's) Botanical Register, which launched in 1815. The register was frequently updated under Sydenham Edwards and later editors.  By the time the fifth update had been published Edwards' name became synonymous with the publication and became part of the title: Edwards's Botanical Register consisting of a complete Alphabetical and Systematical Index of Names, Synonyms, and Matter

Edward Close is a short cut-de-sac and there are probably fewer houses than there were words in the full title of Edwards' publication!

But this is another orchid related street, and we should ask how many of its residents know of this connection.

Ardens Way is a 1960s residential road on a hill from Sandpit Lane via Briar Road up to The Ridgeway, Marshalswick.  Given that the word Arden has connections with woodlands and forests, and although there have been woodlands hereabouts, though not extensively, we need to look elsewhere for a connection, if there is one.

Arden's Marsh

Continue eastwards a short distance along Sandpit Lane until we reach House Lane, the entry road to Jersey Farm, and we come across a tiny hamlet of what is now limited to a short terrace of traditional farm  labourers' cottages of uncertain age. Its name is still known as Arden's Marsh.  Referring to older maps the name had been known variously as Hardings Marsh or Harden's Marsh.  Since the 1970s House Lane has met Sandpit Lane at a roundabout, but before then the connection was an oblique junction running behind the terrace of homes.  Now it is no more than a short footpath.  It is possible that its original name began with Hardings and only in more recent times did it morph into Ardens. Perhaps!

However it does seem probable that Ardens Way was named as such because of its proximity to Ardens Marsh.

Various attempts are made to bed the streets of modern residential estates into their historical landscapes, even if a certain amount of invention is required.  It is quite common for the traditional field names to be re-used as one of the modern streets.  When laying out the London Road estate in the early post-second world war period, a field bordering a section of Cell Barnes Lane had been known as Hopground Field.

Typical Kentish hop ground field.

Although no part of our East End was particularly known for the production of beers and other alcoholic drinks, fields used for the growing of hops were common and widespread.  Today many brands of drinks are nationally named and produced on industrial scales.  Transport is only one reason why this has not always been the case.  A key alternative reason is the variability of the natural water supply and beers, mead, ciders, and various other fermented drinks were created locally and consumed locally, even by children in lower strengths.  The fact that a former field has been known as Hopground Field suggests it had been used as such in relatively recent times.

Sunderland Avenue is in the district north of Fleetville and developed on land previously owned by Earl Spencer and building had begun from the late 1920s.  The roads have frequent references to ancient and titled families with connections to St Albans.  Titled families are fortunately straightforward to connect; they almost always leave strong historic footprints!  Charles Spencer, the third Duke of Marlborough (another St Albans connection) as Earl of Sunderland in the eighteenth century inherited a title passed from his elder brother.  It is not only the titles themselves which are recorded in history but the beneficial bodies and charities they become associated as their names are recorded.  Their influence assists those bodies on whose trustee and governor lists they appear.

Representing the Coram Foundling Hospital

In this case the Earl of Sunderland was a founding governor of the London Foundling Hospital in 1739.  Coram, the organisation is still known today as a key children's charity, and influential individuals remain keen to be associated with similar charitable causes.  We are sure that residents of Sunderland Avenue who are aware of the origin of their road's name will be additionally proud that Sunderland's association with Coram and his charity ensures its continued success in the 21st century.