Beechwood Avenue Junction

 I was recently asked whether the junction which Links Hatfield Road, Beechwood Avenue, Beaumont Avenue and Ashley Road has always looked as it does today.  But of course almost everywhere used to look different!   And with this junction it is a mater how far back we should go.  So we will begin with the 1920s. That's far enough.

The roadway is Beaumont Avenue in the 1920s.  The stile leads to a
footpath across the field towards the farm, approximately on a line
matching Beechwood Avenue, though not at the time even a line of
a map. 
COURTESY ST ALBANS MUSEUMS

On the left was a plot-sized field used as a builder's yard.  Where the grass verge is had been
a brick street shelter c1940 – 1955.  This is Beechwood Avenue towards Hatfield Road.

On this corner had been a posting box, a telephone kiosk, and before that a brick-built
police reporting cabin with public phone accessible externally.

Recently a pair of redundant barred gates were brought from Smallford and erected at each end of the Avenue (now Beaumont Avenue) because it was a private road belonging to Beaumonts Farm. There was then no Beechwood Avenue.  There was no Ashley Road either; it was, instead, a trackway –  a trackway forming an extension of The Avenue from the farm homestead.  Beaumont Avenue didn't then stop at Hatfield Road but continued to join up with Hill End Lane and was also well known as the Ashpath or the Cinder Track .  So the junction was much simpler in the 1920s.  Carts were still around and from the higher driving position the sightline from the Ashpath junction with the righthand blind bend of  Hatfield Road was not materially difficult until houses had been built in the 1930s.

The former builder's yard; the later 267 Hatfield Road has not yet arrived.  The phone box
has not yet arrived.  The posting box is just to the left.  T&B Builders are selling
houses in Sandpit Lane.
COURTESY PHILIP ORDE

When the Beaumonts Estate was sold for housing in 1929 a new roadway, replacing a stile across the field towards Hatfield Road was replaced by a new residential road called Beechwood Avenue, punching its way through the hedge line at Hatfield Road. Previously the right-of-way was the only connection with Sandpit Lane.

North end of the then private The Avenue (Beaumont Avenue).

The lower end of The Avenue.

For the next few years homes were not only constructed along Hatfield Road but along the majority of Beechwood Avenue, drivers having to negotiate the cross roads junction.  Meanwhile the right of drivers to use the junction to and from Beaumont Avenue was still not  considered a right of way as the Avenue was still considered private, and those who took the risk to drive across the junction did so at their own risk – until a left-turn-only was made mandatory in the 1960s.

Much occurred during the 1930s.  House building firms created plot-sized compounds for storage, included one on the corner occupied now by 267 Hatfield Road.  Only vacated in 1939, the little field was a children's play space through the war and well into the 1950s, but this little corner of Beechwood and Hatfield Road had much going for it.  A letter box was installed at the corner and a brick-built police building (replacing a wooden version at Sutton Road), arrived at the start of the war, standing where today the bow-shaped flower bed is located.

A substantial rectangular street shelter was constructed c1940 beside the footpath adjacent to the police box and post box.  This was only demolished in the mid-fifties at the same time when the police box disappeared and in its place came a coin operated telephone box.

This remained for a few years until plans were mooted for 267 Hatfield Road, and the phone box was moved to behind the pavement at the entrance of Beaumont Avenue.  A single public telephone with three different locations!

At the time, 1960s, when the city's ring road was being completed the traffic at some of the ring road junctions became busier, and this was one of those risky junctions. So traffic lights were installed.  In line with the King Harry junction – also on the ring road – it was later considered more sensible to replace lights with double roundabouts, which remain in use today.  Before the lights Beaumont Avenue had received a HALT AT MAJOR ROAD AHEAD traffic sign, and when the traffic lights arrived an experiment which provided for a left phase-only for Beaumont Avenue was was short-lived and was replaced by the permanent left- only traffic sign supported by a GIVE WAY instruction.

So far there has been no mention of the alleyway, a footpath from the junction towards Fleetville School but went much further and had finished at St Peter's Parish Church.  Many children from the new Beaumonts Estate walked between Beaumont Avenue and Fleetville School via the alleyway.  Once very popular, many residents find it less attractive today.  Which is a shame.

The alleyway from its eastern end at Beaumont Avenue towards
Fleetville Infants School at Woodstock Road South.