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.
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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.
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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.