Cover Picture 10

Cunningham Hill Farm

Watercolour painting by John Buckingham showing Guernsey cattle grazing in one of the
home fields at Cunningham Farm.
COURTESY ST ALBANS MUSEUMS.

The story of the farm is an ancient one; and probably not unusually it also is short in the supply of available photographs and paintings, prints and  drawings from periods before the late 19th century.  In this post we will focus on the farm's story, for that is the reason it features as a cover image on Volume 1 of St Albans' Own East End. The painting featured here was painted in water colour by mid 19th century local artist John Cunningham.

Surviving home buildings now converted into residential accommodation.

The farm lost its acres shortly after the Second World War for residential development, but its history is long and impressive.  While many of the medieval manors can be fairly accurately placed, that of Thanccton (various spellings) may have been associated with extensive areas of woodland with a more modern translation of Fawn Wood.  No-one can be certain where either name was located.  Where other fairly well distributed manors have been identified around St Albans, that part known as Cunningham Hill, or Cunnynehame, has not been previously identified as an ancient manor site, its link with Thanccton is no more than suggestive, and the name Cunnynehame was still in modest use well into the twentieth century.

Following the Dissolution, the land, along with Sopwell along with land surrounding with the earlier monastery, named into the hands of Sir Richard Lee and then the Grimston family with lane extending north towards Hatfield Road and southwards into Sopwell.  On the western boundary had flowed from the St Albans Hill and joining the River Ver.

It was only at the end of the eighteenth century that a new boundary arrived in the form of Thomas Telford's New London Road, which was not based on any previous boundary.

Part of Springfield, now public open space for the wider Camp district.

A corner of the Springfield Allotment Gardens.

The Cunningham farm homestead lay on the upper slopes close to the Camp track towards Hill End and Cell Barnes, with most of its fields lying on sloping ground between the track and the New London Road; and lying on chalk was well suited to grazing.

From the eighteenth century some of lower slopes were periodically used for military training, the most recent period being during the First World War.  These encampments gave the later residential occupations at the top end of the farm the name The Camp.

World War One training camp in 1915 on part of Cunningham's lower slopes adjacent to
London Road.

On the steeper slopes were developed allotment garden.  Photograph taken in 1917
and showing a group of children having been prizewinners for their tending of a group of 
allotment gardens; probably connected with a senior school in St Albans.
COURTESY THE HERTS ADVERTISER

During the twentieth century, the lower slopes were occupied as community allotments, and in the early twentieth century the Bath Agricultural Society, held more local and highly successful versions of its agricultural shows, including at Cunnynehame.  Both animals, farmers and spectators accessed the showground direct via the former London Road Station, crossing the New London Road and climbing the lower entrance of the farmer where now is Cunningham Hill Road.

While the above particular events are recorded at and near the farm, there is a considerable shortage of drawings and photographs of the same events, and pictures which provide a general overview of some of its boundaries, fields, barns and entrance ways.