Barriers ahead

Cover images on Volume one.

 I have often been asked whether I had specific reasons for the choice of photographs displayed on the front covers of both volumes of St Albans' Own East End (published in 2012 and 2013). Almost as frequently has been surprise when I have admitted each image was part of a carefully planned listing rather than a random collection; indeed, almost as much time was taken on the covers as any one of chapters inside.  Each of the two volumes contain 13 or 14 small images on the front and one larger photograph on the back cover – not forgetting three which comprise the logo.

So, I guess I should reveal how each picture earned its place.  Here, then, begins a new series of short blogs, and it would be interesting to discover the proportion of my readers who have not noticed these little collections!

This bridge adjacent to the former Smallford Station, enables road traffic to link Smallford and
Oaklands Lane with Sleapshyde and Colney Heath.

Buses can lose their tops but in this case it is the top – the deck of St Albans' 
Road bridge – which was decapitated in the 1950s to enable tall vehicles,
including double deck buses on the 341  (St Albans and 
Hatfield Town Centre) to take a more direct route.

Many changes might be needed in new town developments, including reconnecting a
link along the former railway track at Wellfield Road.

What single development or project made the greatest impact on the eastern districts at the beginning of the time period covered by the books' chronology.  By the 1870s the new transport of the age – railways – arrived at the eastern districts. The Hatfield and St Albans Railway was sparkly new and connected the full length of St Peter's rural parish from Hatfield Station, already well established as a route to the Capital, and St. Albans Station at the foot of Holywell Hill, now known as Abbey Station.  The latter would enable passengers to travel onwards to Watford and then into central London; and all before St Albans had its own main line station.  Although the railway's impact in terms of the number of passengers carried was modest, the impact on the local landscape was considerable.

This bridge at Sutton Road was removed after closure of the railway and the road levelled – with consequent improvement to drainage along Sutton Road.  A station was proposed for the
site on the right, but never materialised.

The original bridge in Ashley Road was replaced after the railway closure, to offer a
wider roadway on a ring way around St Albans and at the location of a future industrial
estate.

Detailing on one of the huge arches which takes the Midland Railway over the Hatfield-
St Albans' Railways bridge over one of St Albans' major road arteries: London Road.

Along the 6.5 mile routed were five stations or halts, which was considered well-served at the time.  But the overall impact was affected by an infrastructure of fourteen bridges and three surface railway crossings, the former either to carry conflicting roads or lanes over the newly laid railway track, or to enable roadways to pass under the line.  Three examples of level crossings were created; although it would have been possible for the railway to be bridged at a significantly increased cost, such cost would have been largely impracticable. The locations were at Ellenbrook, Hill End and Cottonmill.

Of the thirteen bridges only one takes the railway (now Alban Way) over a river and only one allows pedestrians under the railway. Two bridges, Sutton Road and St Albans Road, were demolished and not replaced after the railway's closure after the 1950s.  Seven structures were replaced, all of them in the years following closure.  In all cases this was to improve the navigation for road vehicles.  Among these were Cottonmill, Camp Road and Ground Lane.

The replaced pedestrian bridge at Ground Lane when new housing developments
enveloped the railway route.
COURTESY KEN WRIGHT

The former Camp Road bridge was eventually replaced by the Blue Bridge nearby the
old Sander Orchid Nursery, when it was intended to open the old railway track bed
as a leisure walk and cycle route.

During the lifetime of the railway it would have been the company's responsibility for ongoing maintenance.  Following closure, responsibility was passed in most cases to the highway authority. For example the Camp Road bridge near Dellfield was willingly torn down to counter the risk to road traffic and little time was lost in carrying out that task.  Once the conversion of the track bed to  a leisure path became a reality special funding was allocated to the bridge replacement. Today's bridge is known as the Blue Bridge.

There had not previously been a bridge over the railway from the de Havilland side
to the new town housing side, until one was included in the new town road plan.  It
lasted around thirty years before being demolished in favour of the Hatfield Tunnel
and the creation of the Galleria shopping centre.  A second attempt at creating a link resulted
 in the present connection to Queensway.

By far the most complex obstructions to be managed were the Midland bridge/viaduct over London Road (the former a Midland structure and the latter a local project; the A1 bridge during the period of the 1930s road-building programme; and the Cavendish Road bridge in a location where no bridge existed while the railway was open but swept over the track and was paid for by the New Town project in the 1950s.  This bridge had the shortest lifespan of all, having been demolished thirty years later when the Hatfield Tunnel was created.

No-one could deny the significance of a small railway in the 1850s in dividing the parish of St Peter so dramatically.  But, as we have seen above the Midland Railway, which finally built its route through St Albans to the Capital, required bridges on a larger scale for its multiple tracks.  In addition to its London Road structure road bridges were required at Victoria Street, Hatfield Road, Sandpit Lane and Sandridge Road; and occupation bridges at York Road and Jennings Road.  All of these, plus their associated stations, made a huge contractural impact on the growing township as well as the rural landscape beyond.  They have also left a permanent impression on the map, the industrial functions of the town, and ensured that the eastern districts grew as industrial communities as much as residential support networks.

We can now tick off the top left image of Volume One's St Albans' Own East End.

Note: Not all bridges are illustrated in this article.

Slimmon, Boyes and Muskett

 Continuing our occasional ambles around the calm and picturesque Hatfield Road Cemetery I have enjoined three farmers whose lives paused in the East End of St Albans.  In fact we could argue we owe much to the men who occupy plots in this quiet place along Hatfield Road.  In close proximity are the graves of three farming families.  We are so used to hearing of food surpluses and the proportion of purchased food which is thrown away, it is difficult to comprehend the on-the-edge existence of 19th century families who relied on their hard labour.  As to the farms themselves there is a world of difference between the farm or landowner, and family the family who worked the farmer – the tenant family.

A slump in the price of grain in the second half of the 19th century meant that landowners were anxious to protect their rents.  They began to engage tenants experienced in dairying.  This attracted a number of farmers from Scotland where dairying was already a significant speciality.

The two drawings in this series were by Jane Marten in the 1820s.  This is of Marshals Wick Farm homestead, also recorded as Wheeler's Farm, but there was no connection with the murderer of tenant farmer Edward Anstee.  Anstee's replacement was James Slimmon.
COURTESY HISTORIC ENGLAND

Improvements in rail transport and nearness to the capital meant there would be a ready market for milk.  But an event occurred in 1880 which forced the hand of landowner George Marten.  In that year a murder was committed at the Marshals Wick farmhouse, when tenant farmer Edward Anstee was brutally murdered by having several dozen bullets fired into his body by an intruder while he was resting in his bedroom,  A man called Thomas Wheeler was arrested, tried and found guilty; a trial in which the details filled even the national papers at the time.

The boldest headstone, in the form of an obelisk, to the life of James Slimmon
close to the Hatfield Road boundary of the Cemetery.

Within a short space of time James Slimmon, his wife Jane and son William arrived at the farm from Dumfries.  Not only was he an experienced dairy farmer but he brought with him new farming practices.  Although he died a few years later, son William, brought up in the same mould as his father, looked for new farming methods and new marketing skills; pioneering new door-to-door milk deliveries twice each day.  He also led the way in getting machinery demonstrations arranged by manufacturers.  William was the last tenant before the land sale to T F Nash for house building from the 1930s

With the demolition of the former Beaumonts Manor House a new tenant homestead took its
place in 1831 and the second farmer to the new building was John Boyes.

Next door arrived John Boyes, also from Scotland, to the tenancy of Beaumonts Farm, only the second to do so since owner Thomas Kinder decided to move out of the Manor House in 1831.  Under Boyes' management the farm remained a mixed unit instead of changing to dairying.  But the skill came in judging the balance between the specialisms in order to keep the farm profitable.  Like Slimmon, Boyes became the last farmer on this land before housing arrived in the form of Camp estate and eventually Beaumonts estate.

Jane Marten pencilled this splendid drawing of Newgates set back from Sandpit Lane nd occupied by the Musket family.
COURTESY HISTORIC ENGLAND

All three farmers are laid to rest in this quarter of Hatfield Road Cemetery.

Of the three farmers celebrated William Muskett was the only man not from Scotland; he was a St Albans man, managing Newgates Farm for over forty years.  Newgates was a tiny unit of less than thirty acres on the north side of Sandpit Lane.  About the size of a school playing field he managed to make a modest living on whatever mix of produce his acreage would allow.  Being more of a subsistence farm rather than a commercial enterprise William's was probably as typical as it is possible to be of many tiny farms and smallholdings in the UK.  He was the penultimate tenant on his little holding for this and other nearby farms were sold for post-war housing needs, and have therefore been lost as a valuable local food resource.  It is our good fortune that other farms have been able to compensate by their greater efficiencies.  And that the rest of us have progressively been able to choose from an increasingly wide range of occupations than agricultural labourers, cowmen and farm hand casuals which would have been inevitable for many of us up to the late 19th century.

So we will raise a glass to the constant battle fought by these tenant farmers and their families.

Roll Them Out

 It is unusual to re-tell the account of a blog post from years back – in this case twelve years.  Indeed you could say it is quite unnecessary given that blogs have their own timelines and/or indexes to enable its readers to return at ease to any post since 2012 in the same way you would open a favourite book at a favourite chapter.

In this case I have returned to 14th July 2013 and a post titled Keeping it Central.  Not only was this a phrase of exasperation frequently used by a dear friend of mine whenever committee meetings had a tendency to wander – as in "Can we please keep this meeting central" i.e. to the point.  But the title of the post in question Keeping it Central referred to the name of a school, opened in Hatfield Road in 1931.  Named Central School; still there but now after several name changes is identified as Fleetville Junior School.

Students from Central School for girls at their premises in Victoria Street in 1921. 

As a girls school it had begun in the early 1920s in shared accommodation in Victoria Street.  Having the opportunity to move to a modern structure in 1931 you might have thought a new name would have been selected, but the identification for the new building remained Central School, which generated some conversations at the time since the establishment was no longer central to St Albans.  It  did still retain selected girls from across the city for their continuing education when most 13 year olds would have left school.  So it remained a central site in that respect.

The focus of the original post was the first photograph taken in that opening year; serried rows of all children and staff.   Ten years earlier there had been a tenth of that number, and as with any number of class photographs, sometimes with a few recalled names on the back, and still referred to in conversations by grown-up children and grand-children.  As I wrote in 2013 about another revealing style which became popular:

"I am referring to those panorama pictures.  Not easy to handle once you get the photo in your hands.  It often ends up permanently rolled  into a scroll and deposited in a remote cupboard."

That virtually guarantees that the image's subjects will fail to see the light of day, and that the prospect of those names of remembered friends will not be recorded because of the inconvenience of annotating the strip of uniformed faces in tidied rows surrounding the head teacher and teachers.  One suspects such photos were often  arranged to satisfy the ego of the head teacher who, of course, sat at the centre of all he/she controlled.

The five segments of Central's 1931 school photo roll (with overlaps to avoid half-faces) are reproduced in www.stalbansowneastend.org.uk 

If you have not previously explored this website - a partner of this blog - among the topics covered is a section on schools which are  embedded in the east end of St Albans.  Here you will find dozens of class and group photos, thankfully with names recorded in many cases, supplied by their donors.  Of course blog readers have also supplied additional friends or relatives via their comments ("my grandpa's in the third row").  And as a result of a little mis-remembering the occasional correction has been received.  

The site reveals 143 images from the following schools: Fleetville, Verulam, Camp, Francis Bacon (now Samuel Ryder), Skyswood, Oakwood, Central, Marshalswick (now Sandringham), Beaumont, Windermere, Colney Heath, Cunningham, Ss Alban & Stephen, and Wheatfields.

When it comes to the names of people we once knew, we are aware that distance from the event is not our friend, and we are better recording names while we are able; it also assists others struggling to recall the same faces.  If you have an image to share and/or add the names of former pupils you can see, please use the website's email address: saoee@me.com

Minus thirty

 St Albans has grown outwards in all directions, but none more so than in an easterly direction.  Comparing the town as it was in 1835, expansion was deemed essential in 1879, and then again in 1913. and further still in the 1930s.  It made little difference when the Borough and the Rural District were merged in 1974.  The ground area of St Albans has continued to grow.  Of course, not all of the land within new boundaries was built on, although it was population growth which prompted the legal process for what used to be called "taking in" more swathes of the countryside beyond the existing boundaries.

St Albans in 1835; boundary in red.  Mile House and Cunningham are both safely beyond the
town boundary, not being built over for a further hundred years.

While expansion occurred on many of the boundaries – and presumably will continue to do so – this blog is primarily interested in what happens in the eastern districts; after all, that is why our title is St Albans' Own East End.

There have always been a variety of reasons for land not being built over – service uses such as reservoirs, sewerage plants, factories, transport such as road alterations – but by far the greatest acreage has been converted to housing.  During the past month alone announcements made in the press have identified plans for three major residential developments totalling several thousand homes.  Most of these will come from what had until recently been active agricultural sites.  It seems to be an inevitability that the sale price of homes in and around our district will only stabilise once the balance between supply of housing stock exceeds its overall requirement.  It is easy to state the obvious: to construct an appropriate number more homes requires us to buy up and build on farmland and woodland, and that always appears to have been the case.

But what has that actually meant? Since 1900, when the City of St Albans began actively discussing a further movement of the eastern boundary outwards along Hatfield Road from Albion Road (which it had only reached in 1879) all the way to the modest Winches Farm, and finally determined by 1913.

Since 1900 our East End has lost over thirty farming units; mostly complete farms although included were a number of fields owned by landowners whose main centres were in other parts of the district.  And the total does depend on where we choose to draw the informal boundary of "our East End".

Beastneys Farm at the eastern end of Camp Road.  It became part of Hill End Hospital from
1899, yet some of its acres continued to be farmed on an organised scale even down to
the 1930s.

St Peter's Farm, which became Clarence Park and estates between Brampton and Hatfield roads all the way to Harlesden Road, was among the first in 1899. Dell Farm, an outlier unit of Heath Farm, had lost viable land in company with St Peter's Farm and others in c1860 when the Midland Railway was laid.  When Marshals Wick House and its estate was sold in 1927 a substantial swathe between Sandpit Lane and Marshals Drive was built on.  As was Ninefields, land belonging to the Spencer estate.

Cunningham Hill Farm, in the middle of the Camp district, is surrounded by the 
London Road estate (Mile House district).  Many of the farm homesteads survive.

The diminutive Newgates Farm survived until mid-century on the north side Sandpit Lane, but was added to the extensive developments at Marshalswick on the home units of the Marten family at Marshalswick Farm and Dellfield Sandridge Road; then there was the more recent Jersey Farm, and only the more distant Nashe (Nash) in this group has survived.  Oak Farm has survived but much of Beech Farm was, is and may continue to be used to provide the region with gravel.

The above mentioned Winches, though small, was subsumed by homes and shops in the growing location of Oaklands, whose mansion and its later College has continued to lose Oaklands Farm and Beaumonts Farm, the latter whose fields began to be nibbled from 1899 behind the north side of Hatfield Road, while Hill End Farm provided homes and a huge hospital.

Here is a farm, and its homestead, along Coopers Green Lane.  Oak Farm was the site of
Hertfordshire County Show in 1954 and is fortunate not to have been built over.

The designation of Hatfield as a postwar New Town encroached on the farms close to former Bishops Hatfield, over-spilling into the further-most land of the parish of St Peter.  So, to continue where we left off, Popefield Farm was just one of the farming units which gave way to an airfield, then an aircraft making factory, and a recent conversion to university, residential student and business zone, also absorbing Harpsfield Farm.  On the south side of Hatfield Road Wilkins Green Farm fortunately retains open ground, still resisting some development, partly as a result of the 1944 Greater London Plan (Sir Patrick Abercrombie) to retain the rural gap between St Albans and the future planned New Town.  However, the former Great Nast Hyde Farm closed and its fields grew homes, university accommodation and car parking.  Meanwhile Little Nast Hyde Farm has not been lost.

Little Cell Barnes Farm.  Now a part of the London Road estate near the eastern side of Drakes
Drive, it includes both community and business activity.

Further farms on the historical list include the pair of units Roe Green Farms north and south, Roehyde Farm, Redhouse Farm, Hollybush Farm and Smallford Farm.  Nearer to St Albans the demand for houses, work places and retail has intensified on Newhouse Park Farm, Great Cell Barnes Farm, Little Cell Barnes Farm, Beastneys Farm, Little Hill End Farm, Cunningham Hill Farm. The post-war London Road estate, partly for London re-housing, benefited by the closure of three of the farms, and a number of fill-in plots such as the former Sander's Nursery, endless corner sites and the Gaol Field, which in the early thirties produced the Breakspear estate.

It is a rare opportunity to witness the demolition of a former farm homestead, here at
Butterwick.  Following a life winning gravel from the ground it still cannot be given a
future lease of life having been used for waste filling once the gravel had gone.

If there is a farm you don't see above it may remain a producing unit, even if it is temporary grazing.  Or perhaps I have just accidentally  missed it out!  Nevertheless, the fact that we have managed to lose this number of farms must have something to do with the gradual increase in agricultural efficiency across the nation.  Fortunately, if many of the above former farm names (in bold) are familiar to you it will probably be because of the survival in thriving estate names, streets and public buildings.  Perhaps in former times as public house names.

The process of enlargement around St Albans continues.

Grid Plan

 

The Beaumonts estate road layout as originally proposed.

The Beaumonts Farm estate in its present form.
COURTESY STREET MAP CONTRIBUTORS

Preparation is underway to update the content of a number of website pages – www.stalbansowneastend.org.uk – one of which is Beaumonts. A number of readers have conjectured on the road layout designed for the estate in the late 1920s. The remainder of the Farm formerly in the care of the Kinder trustees and subsequently taken over by Oaklands estates, was acquired for onward development by Watford Land, and it was the latter which was responsible for the layout of the dormant and temporary fallow fields for new housing in 1929.

The Avenue as a gated private lane; the scene from the northern Sandpit Lane end.
COURTESY ST ALBANS MUSEUMS

Beaumont Avenue as a modern public highway.

Today the layout pattern would be very different with perhaps a single through road and a number of short stubs with no satisfactory  description to explain the pattern.  Perhaps such layouts are described as "informal".  But in the early twentieth century developers were determined to keep to the simpler and more efficient grid methodology, and so it was that Beaumonts Farm estate followed the same formal pattern.  So we should ask the question, was the grid just a grid, or was there a reason for the outcome distances between the north-south and west-east highways within the grid?

The original lane to the farm house, originally intended to be metalled and named Central
Drive.  Now a private section of road and named Farm Road.

In other words, was there a pre-existing series of land features or structures available to guide the planners?  Let's begin with Beaumont Avenue, the ancient trackway between Sandpit Lane and Hatfield Road with just one connecting road – the historic farm driveway to the former manor and farm homestead.  The first line on the development plan would therefore have been the west/east Central Drive (although the first part of this road remained unconnected and was later transferred as a private road  as Farm Road when attempts were made to complete the development after the Second World War. Central Drive extended eastwards and would have terminated close to Beaumonts Wood had the land not been purchased c1934 for educational use.  Nevertheless a trackway already followed this line and a water pipeline laid beside it which carried water to the farmhouse from the pumped water supply at Oaklands.

One of the north-south grid roads, Woodland Drive north, typical of the estate's layout.
COURTESY GOOGLE STREET VIEW

There was also a pre-existing track from near the junction of Beaumont Avenue with Hatfield Road, and Sandpit Lane.   This was historically a key pedestrian access to the iron house and gave convenient access to the farm homestead as an alternative to the Beaumont Avenue private roadway until the early twentieth century, an alternative public road was built and named Beechwood Avenue. Straighter than the trackway it became its direct replacement.

There are two reasons why a third line was pencilled onto the plan   and became Woodland Drive.  The north end had also pre-existed as a trackway from the farm drive (Central Drive) to enable farm vehicles, pedestrians, animals to the farmhouse garden and well, the barns surrounding the farm yard, and access to a house and storage building north-west of the farm.

Woodland Drive extends from top to bottom and Central Drive crosses from
left to right.  The former moat, coloured blue, was built over roadways and
gardens – with one exception, which the author is unable to explain!

There were also two even better reasons for extending the proposed Woodland Drive southwards of Central Drive, for this was the location of the former moat surrounding the first manor house, the water being fed from a spring nearer to (Elm Drive).  It would have been essential to avoid house construction on the moat itself and on the former surface stream.  Woodland Drive would therefore have been laid out as a single straight line from Elm Drive to Chestnut Drive.

Chestnut Drive itself was also laid on a pre-existing track to service the storage Nissen building which remained on the corner with Beechwood Avenue thoughout the 1950s, having been taken over by T&B Builders until their contracts were complete.

A second road to match Beechwood Avenue and also link Hatfield Road with Sandpit Lane, was Oakwood Drive.  The latter reached Central Drive, but war intervened and the onward section to Sandpit Lane was cancelled – which also meant Chestnut Drive was no longer to be a through road and was curtailed after Hazelwood Drive.

The location of Elm Drive was to avoid too many junctions between the estate and Hatfield Road.

A further road, proposed but not added to the grid, would have been parallel to Oakwood Drive and connected with an extension to Elm Drive on the south,  Central Drive in the middle and Chestnut Drive in the north.  The Elm and Chestnut extensions would also have had an arc of homes outside their sections of the grid.  This abortion was removed entirely from the programme,  resulting from the County Council's acquisition of land for Beaumont Schools, a future primary school and playing fields for what was The Boys' Grammar School (now Verulam).  The latter might instead have been for senior schools for the proposed Marshalswick housing development.  But that's another story!

So, in the case of Beaumonts estate, it may just have been laid out in a simple grid,  but each of the contributory elements appeared to have a specific reason for being exactly where they are.

The only other adjustment, necessary in the mid forties, resulted from the St Albans City Council buying the thus-far unbuilt plots from the former Watford Land and adjusting the Hazelwood Drive (north) layout to provide public open space under new Town and Country regulations.  There had been no provision for public open space, so open space was provided.  Public open space which would preclude informal ball games, that is!

The post-war road re-design of Hazelwood Drive north by St Albans City Council, which included
public open space.