Wanted to Be On His Own

Today, Hutton Street is still a narrow street near Fleet Street, but comprise modern office buildings
instead of tightly grouped trading factories next to the Whitefriars Glass Works.

Hutton Street is tucked away behind the lower end of Fleet Street, near Ludgate in the City of London.  Its association with the printing industry was long established and many nearby firms developed as jobbing printers for the hundreds of City firms.  Thomas E Smith & Co was just one of them. Its footprint, like almost all back-street businesses, was typically small to reduce cost, but instead it grew upwards.

Fleet Street is just beyond the top margin of this map.
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In 1896 Smith's really wanted to expand into other ranges of work than churning out endless quantities of invoice blanks, letterheads and forms.  Colour work was attracting attention but the new colour machines were considerably larger and more complex, and were difficult to accommodate on the existing floor spaces, quite apart from the weight restrictions on upper floors.

Smith's inserted a promotional supplement into the 1907 St Albans Pageant book which it printed.
The Hutton Street premises is on the right and the expansive Fleet Works in Hatfield Road has
replaced the field sold to it by St Albans Grammar School.

Smith set up a separate arm of his business which he named the Smith Colour Printing Agency; and given that colour work would be in the form of catalogues, brochures, advertising and booklets, with the likelihood of large national distributions, a location away from London but with convenient transport connections was sought.

1896 was also the year in which the Trustees of St Albans Grammar School gave serious consideration to the inadequacy of its existing accommodation and to the future of the School. The tithe map reveals that with Earl Verulam the body owned three fields along Hatfield Road.  It was intended that the fields would be offered for development and the income used to create new buildings for the school.

The Grubb periscope and telescope works occupied the building c1916 and left in 1925. One or
two of the largest instruments were constructed in the open air at the back of the works.

A 1950s view of the factory in the second phase of the Ballito era. The side road on the left
is Sutton Road and in the foreground was the toll house nicknamed the Rats' Castle.

Mr Smith required a large site but nowhere near where others lived, so there would be no distractions for his employees.  He would build homes for them, provide shops and an institute for their downtime needs.  He would not need public houses or other risqué entertainments, nor provide them himself.  So he purchased two of the three fields, one on each side of Hatfield Road and in an area he thought of as "remote".  The factory, called Fleet Works after his London printing centre of the company's origin, went up on the south side of the road.  Houses, shops and an institute were planned for the north side in a development he established as Fleet Ville.

So we now know exactly where it was because locals have been calling it Fleetville ever since.  And once you give a place a name people have reasons to be attracted to it.  No sooner had Smith's walls gone up than Earl Spencer sold his St Peter's Farm to add to the earlier housing at Granville and Cavendish; and the trustees of Beaumonts Farm disposed of the first tranche of its land.  Smith did not want his printing agency to be anywhere close to others; regrettably for him, that was not in his gift, and within a few years his factory and ville were surrounded by homes and workshops belonging to others.  But it did give him plenty of employees living close by, and a hugely successful business.

The field on which the factory was built, bounded by the branch railway, Sutton Road and Hatfield Road, gave the district its life blood.  T E Smith Printing Agency lasted until 1918 (although no work was likely to have been undertaken after 1916, the firm having lost almost all of its skilled employees during the war.  Sir Howard Grubb & Sons Ltd were clandestinely moved in by the Government to continue its submarine periscope research before developing some of the world's major optical telescopes.

An aerial of the expanded works with a multi-storey building.  The bus is passing in Hatfield
Road.  The greyed-out section top right includes the adjacent timber yard run by W H Laver.
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In 1925 the buildings were acquired by the Ballington Hosiery Mills (brand name Ballito), another successful business both before and after the Second World War.  During the war the factory turned out millions of shell casings. 

Aerial view today but it includes the former timber yard. No part of the original factory complex
survives.  Although the supermarket is substantial in size it is still smaller than the factory it
replaced.
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Ballito moved out in 1967 and the site became home to Marconi Instruments for a few years before the site was cleared for supermarket use: first the Cooperative Society, then Safeway and currently Morrison's.  We will return to this retailer next time as land has been added in recent times.

A busy week

Occasionally there is a small collection of topics which reflect what has been going on in our East End.  This is such a week, so here we go!

To begin with, an account stretching back to 1929, which I probably should have noted from filed press reports from the time: a young woman of 18 had travelled from Kent to take up employment at Ballito Hosiery Mill, in the year it had greatly expanded, just four years after opening in Fleetville.  She had been fortunate in finding lodgings with relatives at Smallford, and had got to know a young man, possibly another Ballito employee.  An inquest was held after the woman was deemed to have taken her own life after contact with a train near her relatives' home.  There are many gaps in the account, which was passed on by a member of the Smallford & Albans Way Heritage Group.  It seems that a train does not have to be travelling fast to have a devastating effect on the life of a person whose mental condition may already have been frail.  We might for a moment reflect on what trauma she might have experienced if she had felt there was no-one she could talk with.

Ponded section of the Ellen Brook at Ellenbrook Fields

Excited families on Friday last made their way to the one of the last sections of the 400-mile route from Holyhead of Children In Need's Rickshaw Challenge.  The route through "our patch", having left Sandridge, took in Marshalswick Lane, Beechwood Avenue and Ashley Road/Drakes Drive, then London Colney on its way to the BBC Studios at Boreham Wood.  One small (but exhausting) segment in achieving the sum of around £47 million for the charity.  The young people who participated made us all feel good.

Boggy Mead Spring is the other north-south stream

Ever since the closure and sale of the former de Havilland site between Smallford and Harpsfield, the development plan, now very much evident in the university and business district, also allocated a substantial zone for the Ellenbrook Fields Country Park.  Yet nothing more had been heard on the matter, until another issue  intervened – the proposal to quarry the site for gravel.  Both Oak and Beech farms had already been trawled; so had Smallford and a substantial swathe between London Colney and Roe Hyde.  Residents are now bracing themselves and are not looking forward to further years of disruption, dust and deployment of lorry fleets.  A demonstration against quarrying was held on the Fields last weekend, one major element of which would be the effect on  groundwater supplies.  Bearing in mind that one of only two  remaining streams flowing southwards into the river Colne, the Ellen Brook flows through part of the Fields and contamination from this stream would surely also affect the Colne.

Highfield Park Trust held the latest of its annual History Evenings on Friday evening; always a friendly occasion where new friends and acquaintances are regularly made.  This year the focus was on the role of the two former mental hospitals, Hill End and Cell Barnes, in the the period 1939 to 1961, when the major teaching hospital, St Bartholomews (Barts) was in residence.  The Trust is acquiring an increasing documentary archive on the life of Hill End and Cell Barnes, and this includes a number of transcribed conversations with members of former staff and families of residents whose work or treatment brought them in contact with the Hill End/Cell Barnes campus,

Staff drama group at Barts in Herts during the 1950s

 now a new residential development and park.


Finally, the residential development which also serves as a new access road to Beaumont School, was, readers will recall, named Kingsbury Gardens.  This name appeared rather odd, given that Kingsbury is associated with St Michael's rather than Oaklands.  We now notice from the street place recently installed, that the road is called Austen Way, which presumably applies to all three of the linked streets.  Which only leaves the inevitable question about the relevance of the name Austen.  Churchill Homes has been asked but thus far there has been no response.

It might have been Richmond

Fifty years is a long time ago; if you lived in our East End in 1970 you would no doubt have been disappointed to learn of the recent closure of Ballito Hosiery Mills.  But the excitement surrounding its arrival on the Fleetville scene stretches back to 1925, over ninety years ago.

Edward Gould Richmond
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Ballito was a major source of employment in the period when the east end of St Albans was still growing; it occupied a building where many of us today carry out our shopping: Morrison's.  At the time of its arrival the mill was as if the company was a new-start operation – lucky Fleetville.

The name Ballito may have been a new brand name (from Ballington Hosiery Mill, the manufacturer's initial name), but the company from which it developed had a long pedigree, more recently in the UK where silk stockings were imported by two New Yorkers, Alexander and Charles Kotzin, at premises in the City of London.  To secure the success of their enterprise the Kotzins had a close business relationship with the cotton mills of Edward Gould Richmond in the cotton belt city of Chattanooga, Tennessee.  

One of his mills still turned out finished cotton stockings in the early years of the twentieth century, and when silk became fashionable the company built a new mill specifically for the new product.  Cotton costs had been kept low partly as a result of the plantation system, originally based on slavery, and then on a flexible arrangement of employment in the mills which often made use of children who were, the company said, "just helping out".

There was little doubt about the success of the new Ballington silk stockings over here in the UK, but before long the government took the decision to add import tariffs on to a range of silk products, partly to raise funds for the Treasury and to protect the emerging home market.  The Richmond company's response was to allocate substantial funds for building a brand new mill near London in order to avoid the tariffs.

Well, someone saved some money, because the Kotzins discovered an empty former printing factory in Hatfield Road, Fleetville, and their only major task was to import the machinery.  Having brought over skilled operators and trained new employees Ballington Hosiery Mill, Fleetville was under way and quickly expanded.

Ballito advertising in the 1920s

Ballito may well be associated with Fleetville, but it was not, strictly a British enterprise; just a Tennessee business using its financial clout to avoid its products being too expensive when imported to the UK.  It's the way international trade often works.

There are still many families living in and around St Albans whose relatives once worked at the Ballito.  The local history group, Fleetville Diaries, is currently working on a project which includes recollections from former employees, as well as the manufacturing background to the manufacture of silk and nylon hose, the competition which Ballito faced and the success of its marketing.




  

What's That in the Background?

Every so often you come across a photograph with so much detail it is difficult to take it in immediately.  As an example, I was given this image about ten years ago.  So many readers will be familiar with the location, near the junction of Hatfield Road and Sutton Road.  The scene was captured in 1939.

On the opposite side of the road is the original laundry attached the cottage with bay windows.  At the time the laundry also possessed a fenced front garden with the door accessed along a narrow path.

Then there is the huge former printing works which had become the Ballito hosiery mill and about to be converted to munitions manufacture.

Courtesy JANET STALEY HAINES

Of course, the reason for the photo, probably taken by a member of the Tuck family, was to feature son Brian on the trike, together with his friend Alan, whose father Leon Turner owned a grocery shop opposite.  The hoses are prepared for the next motorist to pull up for a few gallons of petrol from Mr Tuck's little garage and service shop next to house – the bay window on the left of the picture.

Box made specifically for St Albans City Police.

London Transport had been operating bus services along Hatfield Road for six years and one of its standard shelters stood back from the road against Ballito's front wall; and the old-fashioned torch logo warning of the school ahead.

But there is something else in the view which, after a decade, I have just spotted for the first time.  In 1931 St Albans Police Force introduced a small number of timber police boxes, so that, in the growing city, patrolling officers would not need to walk back to Victoria Street to complete details and sign off.  Six of them were installed, fitted with electric heaters and a telephone which could also be used from the outside so that residents could make emergency calls.

We know what they looked like, as we have a photograph, above.  Now, looking carefully in the background of the main picture, can you spot a police box?  It is standing on the corner just inside Sutton Road on part of Ballito's site.  Look just to the right of the hat of the departing pedestrian!

When the wooden boxes were replaced with brick versions in 1939, the site was moved to the Hatfield Road/Beechwood Avenue junction.  So few of us will recall the wooden box as shown in the photograph.  Nevertheless the proof in this image shows it was there and adds to the stories of the local police service and communications in the early days of easy access to phones, for regular as well as emergency calls.

We sometimes need keen eyes, or a magnifying glass.