Rescue mission 1

 As long-standing readers of this blog will recall, I try to remind readers occasionally of landscape features which at one time existed somewhere in our district, or perhaps still exist but may have changed since they were last known to exist.  Of course there is a real possibility that a particular feature, well-known as it might have been, was nevertheless never knowingly photographed, except remaining as an incidental part of a scene taken for a quite different reason.  

The Sear & Carter partnership had a shop with a side and rear nursery plot next to St Paul's Church
until it was replaced by St Paul's Place.

In many cases a part of the landscape may be retained uniquely, having been photographed once, and only once, the result remaining the sole survivor of a place which at one time would have been quite common or well frequented. Photos in the form of private collections of paper pictures –  even glass slides from the early days of photography, or card mounted slides from the "popular post-war" period of colour photography.  All have been resilient over time and have survived multiple house moves and changes of family owner.  Until ...  Most end up the subject of a decision, whether to retain or throw, or perhaps pass to a relative in the hope of extending a collection's life.

We may believe that modern digital photographs stand the best chance of survival considering the vast number of clicks.  Not so, as most digitals are considered temporary, and their sheer quantity makes sorting and sifting a challenging task for even the most fastidious of us.

So here are the first two challenges to establish whether their subjects still form a small part of someone's collection somewhere ... anywhere!

Sear & Carter Nursery, Smallford

The company had several trial grounds, their largest being at the former New Zealand 
Nurseries.  Sear & Carter opened the Smallford site as their main sales nursery until 1967.
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Sear & Carter used the field in the centre.  Hatfield Road crosses the picture from left to right 
right.  The photograph was from the 1946 RAF aerial survey.

Photo shows Hatfield Road looking to the east.  On the left is the former toll house and
the old Four Horseshoes Beer House, beyond which was the entrance to Sear &
Carter's Nursery; the same entrance used by Notcutts today.

The partnership of Frank Sear and Thomas Carter had become established in the early years of Fleetville.  They had a shop and a small nursery next to St Paul's Church, the church being on the corner  of Hatfield and Blandford roads.  When the business moved in 1960 it was to a significantly larger location opposite the Three Horseshoes public house and near to what used to be known as Smallford Crossroads (but of course that became a roundabout many decades ago).  This little location had been home to several market gardening and plant nurseries, the largest survivor, once called Nielsen's, has arguably become the most successful in still trading as Glinwell.

However, another had been called (or perhaps sent would be more appropriate after their council eviction) to the New Zealand Nurseries. The New Zealand had, in the late 19th century, having moved there from where Loreto College was later established. S&C then acquired the Smallford site, at which time a bungalow was recalled at the end of a long drive from Hatfield Road.  Later in the sixties the Sear & Carter nursery finally sold out to Notcutts, a firm already trading with other garden centres.  Notcutts, of course is even more successful today, as Smallford was the second of what is now a network of nineteen garden centres.

Notcutt's entrance drive today.  In the 1960's you would have used the same turning when
the owning company was Sear & Carter.

Even today the Sear & Carter era is believed to remain in a small number of memories, of which the bungalow appears to have become the dominant feature of the site; the entrance being in the same place we drive in to the modern centre today.  Does a photograph exist, perhaps with the name board which may not be recalled by everyone.  Indeed, this period is beyond the lifetimes of a large swathe of the population!  It may help to be reminded that a short collection of roadside buildings were then on that side of the road, including a beer house named the Four Horseshoes – not be be confused with the Three Horseshoes on the other side of the road!

Co-operative Supermarket, Hatfield Road

Today, probably the most well-known location in Fleetville is that of Morrison's Supermarket; no need to describe it in much detail.  Before the 1890s it was a field between the branch railway and the recently de-tolled turnpike Hatfield Road, and in 1897 work was seriously underway to build a printing works of significant size for the Fleet Street business of Thomas E Smith.  No doubt as a firm it would have lasted for much longer and didn't even make it until the end of the First World War.  But as a building it was occupied by Grubb Telescopes for a few years, before being acquired by the Cotzin brothers for the hugely successful Ballington Hosiery Mill, also known as Ballito, the brand name of its product range.  Only in 1967 was the original structure vacated and eventually torn down.

The Bindery department in the T E Smith printing works taken c1906.

The same building was taken on in some secrecy during the First World War for submarine
periscope work and later for the construction of large telescopes.  The company name was
Howard Grubb.

The site had reached maximum capacity after the Second World War as Ballito and
Marconi Instruments both used the original structure "with a few additions".

Then St Albans Co-operative Society changed its provisions policy of peppering single-unit shops around the town in favour of a more central supermarket in a building specifically designed for it.  The Co-op Supermarket was the focus of the 1980s, but in less than a decade the company sold out to the giant of the day, Safeway, in a larger new building.  Finally the giant of the North invaded; Morrison's took over Safeway's existing building and then extended further.  So, in the space of 130 years six businesses have traded here in three different buildings.  

The missing sequence is St Albans Co-operative Society.  Safeway redeveloped the site
before being taken on and further enlarged by Morrison's.

Photography has given us a number of images of the printing works in use, and of the telescope assembly within the same building.  Archives are overflowing with pictures; Ballito's use of photography to help sell its product range is well known.  Even Safeway and Morrison have their building styles which can be identified wherever you are.  But after that, what can you say?  A supermarket is just a supermarket.

But the Co-op should have stood out in the smaller food shop style manual.  It was before today's standard boxes, more human in processing its customers through their visits, and it helped to lead the way towards creating bespoke localised regional supermarket brands now found across the country.  You wouldn't class the Co-op building as stylish but then it didn't spend unnecessary amounts on the bricks, mortar and glass.

What I have failed to locate, however, are photos of Fleetville's first supermarket: the Co-op, was to have been at its own vehicle maintenance depot in Sutton Road, until turned down by Planning.  Did anyone take their camera with them on the store's opening day, for example; or even on the final day of trading before the 'dozers moved in to level the ground once more .  Or, of course on any day between. 

Cover pictures 3

The Camp public house

This week's post features the Camp PH on the centre of the top row
of the book's first volume cover.

Striking out through the East End from Hatfield to St Albans we would pass by, or call in at, the Comet Hotel, the Three Horseshoes PH, the Bunch of Cherries (now the Speckled Hen PH), the Rats' Castle PH (now the Old Toll House PH), the Crown PH (formerly hotel), the Mermaid PH, the Peacock PH – at which the turnpike road began or ended – and the final pair, the Cock PH and the Blacksmith's Arms PH both guarding the entry to St Peter's Street.  All but the final four are firmly within the limits of our East End.  The arrival of the Midland Railway produced the Hatfield Road Bridge which produced in turn the extension of the built-up town in the East End.

The traditional names of the remainder were related to their locations: The Comet Hotel signalled the de Havilland Aircraft Company on it new site in the 1930s; the Three Horseshoes located the farrier's trade, the restaurant how very much a part of the blacksmith's shop; the Bunch of Cherries was built immediately after the Second War adjacent to the cherry orchard leading towards Winches farm homestead; the Rats' Castle was named after the sobriquet of the previous toll house on the site; and finally, although there was no Crown nearby, the hotel/PH was able to locate here because of the transfer of its license from its earlier site in Holywell Hill of today's Abbey Court.

The illustrator's imaginative mind of Camp Hill some two centuries too late and
out of geographic area!
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One public house – on two different sites – were situated to the south of Hatfield Road and one to the north of that road, even though neither is now trading: the Camp PH and the Baton PH.  The photograph on the front cover is the hanging sign which was taken outside the former.  Its picture depicts a tented camp scene, and so we should look back to discover more of its location.  We enter the Camp story at its end, for the public house has now closed. It was at the corner of Roland Street and Camp Road.  Ah! Camp Road; that's definitely a Camp, then?

The Camp PH until its demolition c 2016 on the corner of Camp Road and Roland Street

The Old Camp Beer House nearby at the top of Camp Hill; closed c1914.

The social scene at the New Camp PH included darts and football teams, and outings.
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The Ordnance Survey's First Edition 1830 map marks a single building at Camp Hill.
Camp House, near the top of this extract.

The pub, initially titled the New Camp PH, definitely moved from the top of Camp Hill where there had been a watering hole named the Old Camp Beer House.  But if searching older maps of this little corner at the top of the hill we will first of all discover a squarish building named Camp House.  That might have given the impression of a domestic premises at the junction of Camp Road and Cell Barnes Lane. And a dwelling it may have been. The field on the Cunningham side of the road had been the extensive site of a  military training camp during the period before there was a national standing army.  It is presumed that the only available building appropriate for provisioning large numbers of men for short periods of time was the the camp house as named on maps of the 19th century maps.  The last occasion on which training manoeuvres are known to have taken place here was at the beginning of World War One, and the tents used were conical in shape – just like those on the pub sign.  

A postcard photograph of a tented village at the lower, London Road, end of the Springfield
training ground early in the 1914-18 war.  The illustrator used similar designs for his 
"Roman" scene.

But where does the centurion, also depicted on the sign, come into the story?  Well, of course, it doesn't.  The illustrator's imagination and historical knowledge of Roman Verulamium are definitely mis-aligned.  Soldiers and their officers would have no business being billeted at the top of a hill some way beyond there Roman city; no town of St Albans then.

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The fact that a modern commercial building halfway up Camp Hill gave its name to the recent flats and has been named Centurion Court is also a distraction and no link at all to our story. But no verifiable information about a field at Cunningham, otherwise known as Springfield, being used for military training nearly two millennia ago.  But there is, of course, nothing wrong with combining imaginative events.

This image earns its place on the cover of Volume One of St Albans' Own East End  simply because it combines fact and fiction and is part of the local story of our part of St Albans.

Cover Pictures 2

 

This week's visit to the St Albans' Own East End book cover is represented by 
a former turnpike milepost, this one at Fleetville Recreation ground.,

We cannot be unaware of a number of mile posts along Hatfield Road, as well as a surviving one on St Stephens Hill.  They are certainly not current types, quite apart from the reason we no longer mark miles along ordinary roads.  This second of a series, as shown above, appeared on the front cover of the first volume of the book St Albans' Own East End. It had appeared on the top row, and many residents of the Fleetville locality may recognise it standing outside the Fleetville Recreation Ground.  Many people today refer to it as Fleetville Park.

One side of the Fleetville milepost which was altered at some point
when the work of two trusts were extended as far as Ware. 

There was nothing particularly special about this, and other mile markers, for, all over the country, there were what were known as Turnpike Roads, generally operated by trusts, and in most cases built by them when not maintained by the parishes through which they passed.  The theory was that turnpike roads would be maintained to a reasonably common standard using funds collected by those who travelled along them according to the distance with their animals and vehicles; not necessarily for every single journey, but sufficiently regularly to encourage income.

You would not recognise the place today but this was how the Peacock PH looked in the mid
19th century.  It is possible the toll payment booth was on the left; travellers leaving
St Albans for Hatfield would pay here, but travel from here across the town was not
chargeable.
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The road which interests us is the Reading and Hatfield Turnpike for the obvious reason a single Trust was responsible for collecting the fees, or tolls between these two towns.  While it was eventually a legal responsibility for trusts to set up a labelled mile post for each mile of roadway, the number and location of toll charging points did not always compare with the location of mile markers.  In a similar  way we may be charged to travel today by bus or coach a given distance, and it might be for a single journey, a return journey, perhaps with an animal, luggage or child!  There may be no charge at all through the centre of a town – but only by agreement between the borough authority and the road trust; as happened in St Albans.

The letter of the law might prevail to maintain good order, either to ensure travellers are charged correctly, or that travellers do not pass along nearby private land to avoid payment.  Many newspapers carried reports of such contraventions.  There was also reportage of trusts not maintaining their road sections correctly, and the roads might have been just as potholed as they can be today!

This was a tolled road between Colney Heath and the Great North Road; the clue lies
in the name of the farm!
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The Great North Road, along London Road, for example was an example of one of our Turnpike Roads, although there is now little or no evidence of its 19th century existence.

The building on the left at Horseshoes, now Smallford, protected a gated
road opposite the Three Horseshoes PH.  The gates were removed
shortly before the final tolls were charged in 1890.
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The Reading and Hatfield , however, still shows evidence of a continuous line of mile markers from Ellenbrook, Popefield, Oaklands, Fleetville, The Peacock PH and St Stephen's Hill.  All others are probably now buried on the spot at the beginning of World War 2 when signs were removed to confuse the enemy if they invaded.  The above remaining examples either evaded removal or were promptly returned when Peace was restored.

The change from Turnpike Trusts (and privately owned sections of roads) to local highway boards and then highway authorities took place nationally over a lengthy period of time; Hatfield Road and St Albans Road East was one of the last in 1890.  We also know that the Fleetville Milepost today is not in its original location, having been moved "along the road" from halfway along Bycullah Terrace when one of its properties was altered to create a new shop frontage.

Along this same stretch of toll road there were also toll collecting  cottages at side road entrances to Camp Road, Sutton Road and Colney Heath Lane, and across the main road at Roe Hyde, Horseshoes (Smallford) and Peacock Public House. Payment tree-commenced at the foot of Holywell Hill for onward travel towards Rickmansworth.

On a new section of the North Orbital road just south of the Hummingbird Junction (the former
Noke Hotel) in the 1930s.  Children are being escorted across the road on their way home
from their new school in Bricket Wood back to Chiswell Green.  Along the verge on the right
is the Noke Lane/Lye Lane white mile marker indicating the presence of mileposts south of
the city before World War Two though none remains today.
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Many accounts and stories (which may or may not be true) here recorded of travel along the local turnpike; not all of which have satisfactory or true conclusions, including the most commonly repeated suggestions concerning members of the Salisbury family.

Portion of a painting by John Westall showing the Hut Toll gate and house in Colney Heath
Lane near its junction with Hatfield Road.  There is no evidence of it today.

Whatever we do or don't know about the turnpike roads they were all part of our east end local story – including incidents of embezzlement, favouritism, laziness in office, and more.

What life might have been different if payment in the 18th and 19th century could have made using an early day version of a travel Oyster card!