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.