After 78 years

 

The Beaumonts estate as first laid out. Much of Beaumonts Wood has gone to provide ground for the schools and their playing fields. The broken orange lines never saw the light of day – a short stub of the extended Central Drive is now Oakwood School's entrance drive.

This map was surveyed in 1939.  The Central Drive/Oakwood Drive corner
is on the far right.  It would have been a cross-roads.  A swathe of wooded
ground has already been carved out to make the extension of Oakwood
Drive towards Sandpit Lane, which never happened. There are
other roads with no homes yet behind them. They would appear after WW2.

The final tranche of land belonging to Beaumonts Farm was offered for sale in 1929 and was acquired by holding company Watford Land. The company set out the road plan which would connect with Sandpit Lane, Beaumont Avenue and Hatfield Road, and at subsequent auctions plots were purchased by a number of mainly local house-building companies.  Two spine roads, Beechwood Avenue and Oakwood Drive, were to connect Hatfield Road with Sandpit Lane.  A third one had already existed, and had done so for centuries, Beaumont Avenue.  Beechwood Avenue had been aligned  with the agreement of the council, to connect with Marshalswick Lane as part of what was then known as the Circle Road (ring road).

Three connecting roads also appeared on the development map: Elm Drive, Central Drive and Chestnut Drive. None was completed to their finished lengths.  For the next ten years house building continued, working from Hatfield Road and the southern end of the estate, until in 1940 everything halted because of the war. Most of Beechwood and Elm had been completed. So too had the southern end of Woodland.  Hazelwood south was largely finished on one side and Oakwood had almost reached the future Central Drive.

Oakwood Drive looking towards the corner with Central Drive and in the direction of Sandpit Lane (not, of course, visible).  The (cream) house straight ahead would make such an extension impossible
today.

But restarting such a development after hostilities had finished would financially and logistically be a challenge; many pre-war housebuilding firms did not survive the interregnum, and the post-war license system limited how much building each could carry out.  In part the council came to the rescue by purchasing the swathe of ground from Woodland Drive to the school playing fields boundary.  A revised road layout was devised which took the boundary up to the playing field fence, which would then prevent Oakland Drive from continuing from the Central Drive junction as far as Sandpit Lane. Which later enabled number 51 Central Drive to be constructed in the space of the redundant road line.

The council then built a number of houses for rental in Woodland Drive and Hazelwood Drive north.

Of course, since our home area was effectively a huge building site children of the 1940s and 50s were able to take the short route from Oakwood Drive to Sandpit Lane by walking along the western side of the chain link fence erected by the County Education Department; and once the Hazelwood houses were in build it was easy enough to hop over the fence and follow the same line along the inside edge of the school field.  You could wonder how the author knows that odd fact if you like!  You could even wonder how much is known about the oak tree part way along that walked path close to where the Verulam School's pavilion is located.

Blue circle: Oakwood/Central corner. Red circle: approximate location of oak tree near Verulam School changing rooms. Yellow circle: beginning of path along Eagle Way. Green broken line: intended path
from Eagle Way to Central Drive. Green dotted lines: informal pathways worn by children in the 1950s.

Almost as soon as we had climbed over that fence we were able to nip across the field to Oaklands Wood, still there behind Oakwood School's site but now much depleted.  The woodland wasn't in any sense public; we knew that because there was a large sign fixed to a tree which informed us to KEEP OUT.  But we ventured there anyway.

I have reached this far in the post to reach the connection between the 1950s and a decision made recently...

Standing out against the sky at Oaklands Grange.

... in the 21st century and at the new housing on the edge of  land belonging to Oaklands, called Oaklands Grange.  Now that the homes are largely all out of the ground an increasing number of people have become familiar with Oaklands Grange and its access to Sandpit Lane not far from the opposite driveway from Newgates, a former mini farm, and the access drive from the Verulam School field.

To leave the Oaklands Grange development residents must walk first to Sandpit Lane – ah ha, so quite close to the old informal route youngsters walked in the 1940s and 50s; seventy-eight years or so after a certain number of those young children found their own way between Sandpit Lane and Central Drive.  If they weren't going to build the extension road, we'll find our own way.  So, an informal path was gradually worn in.   

The future path begins.

The path from Eagle Way skirts outside the boundary of Oakwood School towards
Central Drive.

Children living today at Oaklands Grange are to be given an alternative to the walk along Sandpit Lane, Beechwood Avenue and Central Drive to reach their schools.  They will be able to take a short cut.  The formal start of the path is already prepared at the southern end of Eagle Way.  Pass a few trees westwards and you will reach the former KEEP OUT sign and pass to the outside of the Oakwood School boundary, now itself wooded to reach the school entrance at Central Drive.

Two informal footpaths worn by 1950s children not trying very hard to keep out of trouble, now become part of the 2020s story of families finding their way between home and school along almost the same footpath.  There is little doubt that the child evacuees who came to be part of Beaumont Schools during the 1940s also adventured along these two routes to reach Sandpit Lane and to explore Oaklands Wood and its KEEP OUT sign.

We will look out for the official opening of the new link path, hopefully soon. 

Absent Photo: the Tin House

 In this blog research has been made challenging in locating a house, even though it was not demolished until 1938.  In fact, there was a second building which we will refer to later.

The Tin House, circled in red, faces the former footpath from the Marshalswick Lane/Beechwood
Avenue junction.  Today's Beechwood Avenue is the broken orange line.  Today's Woodland Drive
is the broken green line.  The remaining buildings of Beaumonts Farm are close to the farm
track from Beaumont Avenue, only just visible on the left of the map,  We know it as Farm Road and
Central Drive.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND 

The Tin House, sometimes referred to as the Iron House, is shown as occupied in the 1901, 1911 and 1921 census and continued to be lived in until the late 1930s.  It was brought to a little plot of land north of the farmyard of Beaumonts Farm; today the little house would be in the garden of 75 Woodland Drive but opening onto the footpath which Beechwood Avenue north is close to today.  The question of why such a building, a form of prefab, came to be in this location has not yet been proven.  However, the following provides a probable explanation.  Beaumonts Farm ceased to be managed by the farm's tenant in 1899.  From then on it became the responsibility of Oaklands Farm.  Beaumonts' fields continued to be utilised but lost the use of the farm homestead and any outbuildings.  Two portable structures were acquired; an early form of Nissan building, shown in the photograph below. and a family-sized single storey house also constructed out of metal.

The Nissan Hut between Beechwood Avenue and Woodland Drive and alongside Chestnut Drive.
Probably erected c1916 and in the 1940s used as a Sunday school outpost for St Paul's Church.
COURTESY SHEILA ARTISS

At the start of the First World War there was a requirement to farm the land more intensively, to replace imported foodstuffs which were in short supply.  Nissen buildings were cheap to purchase and easy to erect.  The chosen site was next to an existing track near Sandpit Lane; today it would have been between between Beechwood Avenue and Woodland Drive alongside Chestnut Drive.  In fact, its final function was the builder's yard of Tacchi & Burgess during the contract to construct the houses of Woodland Drive north and Chestnut Drive, after which c1960 it was demolished.  For a short period after the Second World War it served the growing estate as a Sunday school, an outpost of St Paul's Church.

This is NOT the Tin House described in the post, for we have no photograph of it; but is a representation of it from another location.  We know there were four rooms; the map shows a
very small external structure likely to be a toilet.

In 1901 the Tin House (Iron House) was occupied Edward Ashwell, his wife Eleanor and their daughter Sarah.  Edward was employed as a farm labourer.  In the 1911 census this role, or more specifically the cowman, was undertaken by Louis Bundy, with his wife Merrina and their four children.  By 1921 Charles Atkins, his wife Edith and five children lived here.  Mr Atkins began as a cowman on the farm, but by 1921 Mr Ivory of Townsend Farm rented one or more of the fields, and he employed Mr Atkins as a ploughman at the Beaumonts Farm. A resident of St Albans recalls seeing the tin house in the 1930s, describing its location as "in woods next to Beaumont Avenue".  This would have been shortly before the thickets were removed to create Beechwood Avenue north.  The resident knew the Tin House was occupied by the Atkins family because she was aware the children attended Fleetville School.  Charles Atkins and his wife Edith lived there with their five children.

This is the only known photograph of Beaumonts Farm homestead.  The track which became
Central Drive is across the bottom of the picture.  The road which became Woodland Drive north
will lead off to the left.

There is something else we know of the Tin House.  The tenant of the homestead, Edmund Coombe, ran a horse business there and in his retirement was an "assurances clerk".  His death occurred in 1931 and there followed an auction of his possessions.  Included in the inventory was a "corrugated iron four-roomed cottage".  We suppose it might not necessarily have belonged to Mr Coombe; it may well have been included in the auction as being no further use on the estate, then in the hands of Watford Land Limited.  The Tin House  was not sold and remained standing until 1938 when it and the farm  homestead were demolished by Arthur Welch who was about to start building houses in Woodland Drive.

So we know exactly where it was located, when it arrived and when it was demolished; also its shape and that it was constructed of corrugated iron.  According to map evidence the little building was approximately L-shaped.  Of course, we also know the names of three families who lived there during a period of almost forty years – including as many as ten children who all are likely to have attended Fleetville School.

A young group of children attending Fleetville School in 1914 when the building was no more
 than six years old – about the same age as these children.  Children living in the Tin House attended this school and one of them may even be in this group.
COURTESY FLEETVILLE INFANTS SCHOOL & NURSERY

It is probably reasonable to expect no photograph was taken of this little family home; it is only because a group photograph was taken in the late forties in front of the Nissan building that we are blessed with a partial image of the barn.  But there may be pictures out there somewhere.  For the Ashwell, Bundy and Ashwell families the discovery of such a photograph would make more complete their life stories in this part of St Albans.  And because we know the names of the children we can celebrate their lives here individually: 

Sarah Ashwell; Martina Bundy; Dorothy Bundy; Winifred Bundy, Ellen Bundy; Violet Bundy; Nellie Atkins; Louise Atkins; Charles Atkins; Arthur Atkins; William Atkins.