RESCUE MISSION 6

Obstacles in the Road

On any one day, even in the earlier days of photography going back to the period before the First World War, anyone living in any district of the city, might have decided to take their own camera on an exploratory walk to record what, to them, would have been an intriguing scene they come across – especially in their own locale.  There are lightly to have been countless numbers of those occasions; but were they worth capturing?

Fleetville rec has spent decades looking and feeling rather empty, although in more recent years
special events, such as Larks in the Parks (here in 2014) produced buoyant, colourful
and musical events.  But its main staple was always football for children and
young people.

At Royal Road a building plot was abandoned through the death of its owner, Thomas Smith.  Shortly afterwards a well-known local benefactor acquired the field and knowing how little public land was available for the growing population of Fleetville, he bequeathed it to the people of that district.  His name was Charles Woollam.  Did anyone take a photograph of this rather untidy square of land in 1913?  Shortly after a team of people from the council arrived, turned the land into a newly grassed playing park for children, installed one set of swings, and enclosed the space with metal railings all the way round.  Surely, in the weeks they were there a resident or visitor may   have experimented with their camera.

An endless number of casual games of football with equally casual goalmouths, and wondrous scores, mixed teams of boys (obviously for the time),  from the school would have delighted passers by.

Traces of an earlier use can still be found from parch marks in the dried grass; here
the emergency exits from underground tunnels in use during World War Two.

In 1938 men (again) and machines arrived to dig trenches in parts of the recreation ground; and more were added in 1939.  Camera operators (photographers) would have been attracted to these machines and workmen.  Or were these acquirers of photo gadgets only interested in their own families in their own gardens or in their own travels?

Because it was a recreation ground and because Fleetville was busy, the city council agreed to pay for a public toilet (Beech Tree Cafe today) to be built.  Another interesting task for 1938.

The orange rectangle highlights the top of street shelters along Royal Road,  thought to be
six in total.  Photographed in the 1946 RAF Aerial survey over Fleetville.  Also
spotted are the emergency water tanks bottom left and a well-used goalmouth or two.
COURTESY HISTORIC ENGLAND

1940?  More men arrived to create a neat row of obstacles along part of Royal Road – yes, actually in the roadway.  Not a drama seen every day, surely.  Public brick shelters in the middle of the road.  And the earlier trenches had tops added. And then lorries arrived in 1942 to erect a temporary structure called a nursery. The structure is still there! Being portable, the Hatfield Road end was offloaded first and put into use; and then the northern half was added.  All on top of the trenches and right next to the road and the school.  Even a built-in game for the children: three concrete ramps led from the edge of the pavement down a slope towards steel doorways and into the underground tunnels.  From then on, the steel doors became targets for boy footballers.  Householders complained naturally, but where were the photographers?

Of course the contractors demolished the shelters in the middle of the road, but the county council still needed the nursery, so the building stayed – for now.  Some locals thought that they might lose their recreation ground – Hatfield Road had become busy and more than a little dangerous because the road was, well, bendy.  Councils tend to do things if someone is counted in an accident tally, or even  killed.  So the bend was made less bendy.

To the left of Royal Road is the roof of today's Fleetville Community Centre,  which first arrived
from its manufacturing site at Hoddesdon in 1942, when it started life as a full-time
nursery for the mothers working in nearby factories.  Today's car parking spaces also
included ramps leading down to parallel tunnels (with the nursery dropped on top).
Locked steel doors kept people out – including the author later kicking his football down
to see how loud a noise the ball made against the doors.  Great fun!

Even the weekly Saturday evening ritual when a council employee cycled from wherever he lived, to padlock the swings together, because, you see, the council rather objected to children enjoying themselves on council land, even a recreation ground, on Sundays.  So you couldn't until it was Monday again.  They were the rules.

In all of this century and a quarter, you might have thought photographs would have been snapped on a few occasions.  Maybe not the Press, but surely, a casual with a new camera, members of an amateur photography club – there were such groups even in the 1930s.

So here is something to look out for"

Street shelters in the roadway of Royal Road (1940 to 1945);

Dug-out trenches on the recreation ground (1938 to 1941);

Arrival of a portable building – the new nursery building – in 1942;

Building of a public toilet and nearby wardens post (1938 to 1939);

Informal games of football in goalmouth areas (at any time);

Long rectangular metal tanks for emergency supplies of water – where the zip wire is today (1939 to 1944);

Railings being installed or removed, or anyone walking through gateways at Hatfield Road and/or Royal Road.

Children playing on the swings near the corner of Royal Road (at any time).

Ramps and steel doors under the nursery (from 1942 to c1960).

Happy hunting through shoe boxes and albums!

The Young Soldier

 The British Newspaper Archive is a public archive which retains original and digital copies of newspapers and journals of all kinds, and  is not restricted to material originally published in the UK.  Originally a part of the British Library the Newspaper Archive and its massive digitisation project is now owned by Find My Past.  Number of pages have now reached 105 million pages.  And weekly lists announce newly begun new titles, sometimes covering a number of years – perhaps from the eighteenth century – or complete runs up to the modern day.

Of interest to us in St Albans is a well known weekly newspaper produced by the Salvation Army, called War Cry.  First printed in a small building in East London's Clerkenwell in 1879, and transferred to Campfield Road, St Albans in 1901 at the Salvation Army Printing Works (renamed Campfield Press in 1906).  The newspaper is still in publication today, cost 50p, though no longer located in St Albans.

What was announced this week is the organisation's children's version, which has almost its entire weekly run available digitally.  Initially titled the Little Soldier, then adapted to Young Soldier, and finally becoming a colour comic style  Kids Alive!  Currently, the latter is available online up to 1985.  So you can imagine yourself as a child before the start of the 20th century and growing up very very slowly through to modern times.

At inception the weekly junior newspaper in black and white newsprint assumed its young readers to be serious and of high intelligence, and able to understand a number of adult views.

Above is the original masthead, and below a portion of the introductory article from issue number 1:

"Not far from Headquarters, in a little back street in Whitechapel, is the wonderful printing machine, which has just been put up.  Most of you have never seen a printing machine at all, and very few, indeed, can ever have seen such a wonderful machine as that which is now going to work for The Army. 'What is it?' you want to know.  Wheels and wheels, and more wheels again.  Big wheels, little wheels, and middle-sized wheels.  When it is at work, how they go whizzing round to be sure!  Each one seems determined to do its own work, and to help on all the others, as much as it can.  Not a bit like some children, who go squabbling and quarrelling with one another."

The Caption of this 1881 drawing read "If they would only let me in".  The early meetings were for grown-ups.  So here was an early call for meetings to be shared with  "Little Soldiers" or exclusively for them.

Self-Denial Week in 1901; many of us know it as Lent. This event raised money for the Army and children were encouraged to give away or sell toys which they had, perhaps, outgrown.

Many early numbers included songs for little soldiers to learn – pint-sized versions of songs which filled meetings and citadels with voices and instrumental sound, some later manufactured in St Albans next to the Campfield Press.

By 1935 real photographs were being used and smiling faces encouraged positivity.  The new Young Soldiers were learning to live and eat simply, yet healthily.

The Young Soldier always featured stories, some of them written by the readers themselves, upholding the morals of Young Soldiers of The Army.  A header for the week's group of short stories in 1935.

As comic strips began to appear from a number of publishers, The Army followed suit and produced stories of their own, first in monochrome, here in 1979, but later using spot colour, and eventually, as Kids Alive! in full colour.

    Above page sections and pages courtesy BRITISH NEWSPAPER ARCHIVE

In 1985 we finally see samples of modern childhood pursuits, a few years before the masthead was updated to Kids Alive!

We could immerse ourselves in a century-worth's experience in childhood under the wing of the Salvation Army.  All that because every issue has now been digitised and is available online – as long as you have a subscription to the British Newspaper Archive!

COVER PICTURES 8

 Newgates Farm Homestead

As we have come to realise the heart of farm businesses often survived in some form or other for centuries, but in recent times the closure of many farms on the edge of towns resulted in their inevitable transfer to residential districts.  There is a resulting  scarcity of photographic images now remaining for us to scrutinise.  We seem to hold on to the notion that photography has been around for more than a century and a half, and that there must inevitably be a good number of images covering every building there ever was!  But in the public domain there are few photographs, none more than  a rare former small farm at the lower end of Sandpit Lane – Newgates.  You will also find its title named in the singular: Newgate.  The drawing of Newgates at the very left of the third row of cover pictures of St Albans' Own East End Volume 1.

A heavily clad farm homestead behind Sandpit Lane.  This photo shows a corner of the pond,
a feature of so many farm yards.  The pond remains as a part of the pocket park, now within
the bounds of the new housing development.
COURTESY MARARAGET GOWER COLLECTION

It  lay at the eastern end of the higher ground along Sandpit Lane; the road rises in elevation as it passes The Dell and crosses Hall Heath, thought to have been a name associated with the architectural  style of manorial house at nearby Beaumonts.  Sandpit Lane drops again in elevation at  the eastern end of the heath, where the diminutive farm known as Newgates was located.

A pair of pencilled drawings of Newgates drawn in the 1820s by Jane Edgell, formerly Jane
Marten.
COURTESY HISTORIC ENGLAND

So, we are fortunate in having the presence and artistic skills of a member of the Marten family who lived in the former Marshalswick House – another house which no longer exists and is replaced by more modern housing.  Jane Marten was the daughter of George and Jane Sullivan Marten.  Whether it was her passion for rural farm buildings of the time, or whether an interest in historical documentation we cannot say.  But her signature appears on several local farm homesteads which Jane drew a short time before she left Marshalswick to marry Richard Edgell.

A mid-19th century watercolour by John H Buckingham from the eastern slope
of Sandpit Lane descending from Hall Heath.  Newgates is shown on the
left.  The Lane is distinctly narrow as it wanders towards House Lane.
COURTESY ST ALBANS MUSEUMS

Jane's signature style was soft pencil drawing in which she was able to capture the detailed idiosyncratics of weathered structures as their individual materials have worn and moved with time.  Her illustrations of homesteads at Beaumonts and Marshals Wick also appear in St Albans' Own East End.

Today's scene, now a residential development, here named Damson Way.