Ellenbrook in 1946

 In the next of the series of posts inspired by a series of aerial photographs, we have hovered over Ellenbrook, which before modern times was neither part of Hatfield nor an outlier of St Albans.  A collection of aerial photographs appears on the website of Historic England (HE), part of a survey undertaken by the RAF in 1946.  Unless HE has been selective in what it has published from its archive we believe the survey aircraft made a single sweep west-to-east over St Albans.

The featured imaged looks down on part of St Albans Road West and de Havilland Aircraft
Company.  This 1946 survey shot also includes the Comet Hotel (right lower centre) finished in 1936.
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To locate our bearings, the image above is broadly as map and compass with north at the top of the photo.  The road in the lower half of the picture is St Albans Road West with Smallford on the left.  It joins what is now Comet Way (formerly called the Barnet Bypass laid in the 1920s) which joins the photo on the right from the Welwyn Garden City direction and sweeps southeastwards to meet the A1 – now the A1(M) Roehyde Interchange.  The only other roads  of note are the private service road linking the many facilities within de Havilland Aircraft Company, and in the top right corner a lane which linked St Albans Road West and Harpsfield Hall Farm.  The remains of this farm could be seen to the right of the lane.  

Harpsfield Hall Farm which was demolished to accommodate the expansive aeronautical activity.

A late 1920s view of the Flying Club between the completion of the bypass and the
arrival of de Havilland Aircraft Company, which relocated from Stag Lane,
Edgware. The future site of Comet Hotel is left centre with the mentioned 
Ellenbrook homes c1910 beyond along St Albans Road West meandering towards
St Albans.

From the massive hanger to the smaller specialist workshops this company had, of course, completed its massive output of Mosquito aircraft.  It had first occupied the site in 1929, taking over parts of three farms: Harpsfield in the north-east, Nast Hyde in the south, and Popefield in the west.

However, the landscape was not completely empty when DH arrived, for the London Flying Club had occupied the eastern part of the site from the early 1920s.  During that time it was known as the Hatfield Airfield.  

There was even development activity before then.  During the first decade of the 20th century land from Nast Hyde was sold to defray costs of upgrading Great Nast Hyde House.  New houses were erected in St Albans Road West and in Ellenbrook Lane from 1910, and to attract potential owners a golf course was laid out beyond the north side of St Albans Road West, and an agreement was reached with the Great Northern Railway to erect a halt (Nast Hyde Halt) so that residents could board a train to Hatfield Station and then join a fast service to London Kings Cross.  The development was brought to a halt soon after 1914 with the golf course later buried under DH's runway.  Housing on the south side of the main road eventually became the Selwyn and Poplar estates.

Ordnance Survey map from 1937 showing the location of the former homes on the north side
of St Albans Road West.  Comet Hotel is at the map's centre.
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Occupying a broad swathe across the middle of the aerial photo can be seen a few of the early Nast Hyde houses, sandwiched between the main road and the DH service road. Most of the heads of household had London-based jobs, which supported their wide and long plots on which were spacious detached homes.  The house furthest east (where now is the Mosquito roundabout) can be identified by its wide C-shaped front drive.  It was later converted into a social base for the Flying Club; and the last house in the development became a hotel now known as Beales.

As the land demands of de Havillands increased so the houses along the main road were sacrificed.  If you had travelled from St Albans to Hatfield by bus in the post-war period you may have been aware of the homes – and then they were gone!  Today the expansive university parking zone occupies where those families once lived.

The Benskin Comet Hotel newly finished in 1936, showing the beacon on the roof.

In order to allow the Barnet Bypass to connect with the A1 in the late 1920s – shown on the photograph lined with poplar trees – the then  Ministry of Transport negotiated with the Nast Hyde estate to purchase a swathe of land.  Benskin's Brewery took the opportunity of purchasing a triangle of land in a prime position just where the bypass curved off towards the south-west.  The public house and hotel which it had built, and is now listed, took its name from the newly arrived de Havilland Aircraft Company, calling it the Comet, referring not to the post war jet aircraft but the Comet Racer of the thirties.  A motif of this iconic aeroplane has been displayed on the hotel's frontage ever since.  

The Comet Hotel was not just an ordinary hotel design. The architect was keen to shape it in the form of an aeroplane, which can really only be appreciated from the air.  Cockpit, fuselage, tail and wings, albeit stumpy ones, can all be identified.  It is possible that the wings could later have been extended had the need arisen, but this did not occur.  Today the Comet has been fully restored to its original design, following a number of ill-conceived alterations over the years.  Even the roof beacon has been replaced, the purpose of which had been to guide early pilots of small aircraft to the airfield in the days before radio guidance.  The grounds appear surprisingly spacious and the car park uncluttered; although in 1946 a new entrance/exit has been laid to Comet Way to add to the access on St Albans Road West.  The gardens to the rear of the Hotel have now themselves been developed with new student accommodation.

The extension to the top featured image, also taken in 1946.  The C-shaped drive at the house opposite
the Comet Hotel car park is on the extreme left (both of the lower left corner), and the turn-off right towards Hatfield is top right, above which can be seen the former Stone House Hotel with the light coloured surfacing.  Its location can be identified because the road St Albans Road West still exist although the bypass end is now covered by the Galleria car park.
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This week I have added an extension to the featured aerial image, borrowed from part of the adjacent photo.  The main road eastwards joins the Barnet ByPass, and from memory was controlled by a set of traffic signals.  By the 1950s the bypass was very busy and Hatfield New Town was emerging.  On the supplementary image the junction is on the lower left – just below that C-shaped front drive I wrote about above.  To reach the centre of Hatfield by bike, car or bus, vehicles kept to the right lane on the bypass until reaching the wide gap at the next junction on the right, which is a continuation of St Albans Road West.  When traffic flow allowed drivers moved forward to enter the new road.  Today this is at the parking end of the Galleria.

Cavendish Road bridge when newly finished in 1956.  The photograph was taken from the 
Queensway roundabout.  The bridge was demolished c1983 and replaced by ...
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... a flatter bridge under which is the Hatfield Tunnel.  The Galleria shopping centre, on the far side on the right, was constructed over the tunnel.
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Of course, today at the  roundabout in front of the Comet Hotel there is a new road, Cavendish Way, which is part of Hatfield New Town's strategic road network.  When created in the 1950s it bridged the Hatfield & St Albans Railway, which had already closed for passengers.  Hatfield bound buses diverted to this new road and then used Queensway to reach the centre of the New Town.  The bridge was replaced in the 1980s in order to bridge, not only a now closed railway (Alban Way), but also Hatfield Tunnel.

How this entry to Hatfield has altered in the past hundred years.

The Cavendish Sandwich

 In the previous post mention was made of the narrow width of Hatfield Road as the carriageway descends from the cemetery to The Crown.  The first development occurred here from the 1880s – but only on the south side; it would be nearly two decades before the north side followed suit.

The OS map published in 1898 shows a mainly fully developed Cavendish estate, formerly
a tree and shrub nursery managed by John Watson. The properties described in this blog
are within the red rectangle.  For a few years occupants of this part of Hatfield Road 
would have the benefit of a view across to St Peter's Farm and the laurel grove.
COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND.

We have laid out the picture of the road as far as Cavendish Road, named after William Cavendish, the Sixth Duke of Devonshire and President of the Horticultural Society (before Royal embellished the title).  The Duke developed one of the country's finest orchid collections, and the street was named in his honour by St Albans' own Orchid King, Frederick Sander.

The next parallel road on Sander's development estate, is Albion Road.  Orchid specialists might wish to confirm whether Albion or Alba was an early variety of orchid named before 1921. The buildings standing on the corner of these two roads sandwich a terrace of homes named 1 to 5 Whitbread Terrace, now 168 to 160 Hatfield Road, and Laurel Cottage, now 158.

The forecourt of Butler's Garage on the Cavendish Road corner.  The workshop behind
incorporated the earlier saddlery and the boot manufactory.
COURTESY BRIAN BUTLER.

The site of Butler's Garage became homes in recent times.

On the Cavendish Road corner the plot, which has only become  housing in recent years, may well have been part of the land belonging to Shakespeare House (later renamed Shakespeare Cottage).  Since being released from nursery use in the late 1870s and being typical mixed development, the land may have remained a building yard for a few years before being taken into occupation by engineer Thomas Hurst. William Jenkinson then constructed a saddlery business on the site in a workshop which remained on the site until the new houses appeared.  A small but busy boot manufactory moved in and during the leather-working downtime a new Methodist mission occupied what spaces remained  on Sundays and in the evenings.  When that factory moved to new premises in Grosvenor Road tailor Daniel Mitchell arrived, and the site later  upgraded for use as a motor garage and workshop for Robb Butler in 1938.  Changing to Swan Car Hire in the 1960s the site was finally relinquished for domestic use by the  millennium.

Numbers 2 to 5 Whitbread Cottages.  The name plate for this terrace is at the top of the
righthand house.

Beyond the modern homes is a terrace of five small dwellings, originally named Whitbread Terrace,  erected in 1883 and benefiting from a view over the "lane" to the farm yard and homestead of St Peter's Farm. Most of the occupants remained here for many years. The owner of the terrace, revealed in the Valuation Office records of 1910 to 1915, was Caroline Shillitoe of Radcliffe Square London SW.  The name plate is fixed to the righthand dwelling.

The two detached houses as viewed in 1912.  On the left is Laurel Cottage, but though they began
as identical buildings the ID panel on the right house has the date 1889 and not Albion Villa, which suggests it was rebuilt on a slightly wider footprint, but otherwise reflecting its partner and the
date both houses were first built.

At the lower end of this terrace stand two identical detached properties with porched entrances and front bays. Today, while you can see the similarities there are also significant differences; it is not just the bay of the righthand house which was lost on conversion for commercial use.  In the eaves are inset panels naming the homes as Laurel Cottage and Albion Villa.  The upper part of the farm field opposite was a laurel grove, which offered the house its name, which  proceeded the naming of the short Laurel Road nearby.

Albion Villa in the era of E E Hooker Ltd, the glass specialists.  First floor windows have
designs of coloured glass which remain today.  This 1964 view shows all of the described
 buildings from Butler's Garage on the far left to the impressive frontage of E Hooker Ltd.
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William Willoughby and Charles Hooker preparing a portion of coloured glass window; a 1960
photograph to celebrate the commission to supply a window for Coventry Cathedral.
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A member of the glassmaking E Hooker family moved into number 3 Albion Road around 1932 and the formative glass business was carried on in a workshop to the left of the house.  A few years later Albion Villa was a acquired and the ground floor converted into a sales area, with upstairs accommodation used for designing the richly coloured designs and motifs used in the company's work in commissions widely in this country and in churches and cathedrals around the world.

We now arrive at Albion Road and it seems appropriate that its name, like Cavendish, should have a link to orchids.  So the question deserves repeating: is there an orchid variety with the Albion name before a 1921 hybrid of the same name?

So we have nearly completed our exploration of Hatfield Road, there remaining one block to reach a conclusion, and possibly a pint, at The Crown.

Outside the boundary

 In the previous post we had reached the western boundary of the Hatfield Road Cemetery on our walk towards The Crown.  St Albans had remained fairly constrained until the arrival of the Midland Railway when development produced estates which took advantage of the new mode of transport.  The boundary of the town was stretched to land at Cavendish Road in 1879, although there is no sign of the boundary marker today, possibly removed when the 1880s Cavendish estate was created.  Houses on the estate strode over the new "edge" no sooner than the boundary had been plotted on the town's maps.

The Lucern Field and Nine Field which made up Ninedells nursery, bounded by Hatfield Road (top), Camp Road (left) and branch railway (bottom right corner).  The nursery drives appear to have
become repurposed as Cavendish Road and Albion Road.
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The pair of fields which lost its green functions first lay between the former Kinder field, by 1880 being prepared for use as a civic cemetery, and Camp Road.  The tithe map of 1840 names them as Lucerne Field and Nine Field and together they had extended to the Camp Fields (now Campfield Road) until the branch railway arrived and sliced away the lower end.

Ordnance Survey map 1897 shows Sander's nursery below Cecil Road and fully occupied. 
The housing estate, begin in the early 1880s is shown significantly fully built.
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Until the 1870s these fields were used by John Watson as a nursery, mainly for the propagation of shrubs and trees.  They were acquired by Frederick Sander in 1878 for his expansion of the orchid business he ran from premises in George Street.  Sander created his specialised orchid nursery on the lower section between Cecil Road ad the railway – he probably wished he had reserved rather more space given the success of the operation!  The remaining portion between Cecil and Hatfield roads was developed for housing, the profit from which was used to help pay for the nursery.  Cecil Road connected two parallel streets, Cavendish and Albion roads, and although the layout was intended for houses a few commercial premises found their way here, especially along Albion Road.

Rose Cottage with its name tablet just visible to the right of the upstairs bay window.  The
cemetery is to the left.  The photo was taken in 2012.

Our focus is along Hatfield Road, with space for four premises between the cemetery hedge and the newly laid Cavendish Road: Rose Cottage and the three Horndean Villas, now numbered 176 to 170.  The name Rose Cottage was appropriate in the early days, for until around 1904 it was a modest house on the very edge of countryside, with a larger first floor to allow for the passage of carts or small carriages into space at the rear, occupied by a stable and cow house.  Upstairs were four bedrooms with a parlour, scullery and kitchen on the ground floor.

After twenty years the opportunity was seized by Edwin Seymour who acquired the cottage and converted it into a monumental mason's business.  Since the 1950s it has variously been Fireplace Services, a machine tools business and Radio Rentals, before returning to domestic occupation.

The three Horndean Villas pictured in 2012, designed with attic accommodation.

Here is just beyond the easternmost boundary of St Albans c1912 and in a few years after the 
Horndean Villas were completed (far right) right on the edge of the expanding urban area,
Fleetville has spread all the way to Beaumont Avenue.  The narrow road continues into the
distance and would not be widened beyond Rose Cottage, with the removal of the trees,
until the 1930s.
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The hill descending to The Crown junction, still in its unwidened state.

Next are the three Horndean Villas, on land purchased by and built on by John Gurney from London Colney.  Although at various times owners had carried on business such as a house agent, insurance agent, decorator and furrier, the villas have remained splendidly unconverted.

Because of its early development it has remained the section of Hatfield Road impossible to widen as Fleetville grew.  Inexplicably, in spite of the volume of traffic parking is still permitted, and this on the approach to a complex light-controlled junction.

Aerial photo of the Cavendish estate today.  The cemetery is on the left; The Crown PH
is the large building behind the grassed frontage on the extreme right.
COURTESY GOOGLE EARTH

Next time we will follow the changes which have taken place between Cavendish and Albion road.

Contrasting tracks

Most of our streets came about during the period of expansion and utilisation of former fields into residential or mixed development.  Before Kingshill Avenue there was a field sloping downwards towards the former Marshalswick Farm.  Royston Road and its neighbouring streets were carved out of a large field where cattle had grazed; and Cavendish Road, though there may have been a footpath of sorts, was created from an orchard or a tree nursery or a small crop field, depending on time. 

Although there are minor roads which were formerly footpaths crossing the countryside, and roads linking towns which have existed for several centuries, it is rare to come across a road with a life stretching back into antiquity, probably part of an ancient network of trackways which traversed the region.

Pre-development Beaumont Avenue at the Hatfield Road end.
COURTESY ANDY LAWRENCE

Part of one such route is now Beaumont Avenue and forms an attractive residential road linking Sandpit Lane and Hatfield Road.  Along this road was a minor spur leading to Beaumonts Farm.  The spur today is part private (Farm Road) and part adopted, absorbed by the residential estate as Central Drive.

Remove the homes which line each side of the Avenue, all but three of which arrived since 1899, and you are left with the remains of a double stand of fine trees.  

The track which wandered through the former manor estate had extended through wooded land of uncertain age north of Sandpit Lane.  Today we know this as The Wick.  Also part of Beaumonts Farm was a continuation of the track towards Hill End.  Now Ashey Road, it is a mix of early 1930s semi-detached homes, a post-war industrial estate and the green acres which are now Highfield Park, formerly Hill End Hospital.  How this section of the track contrasted with the Avenue: it had been dug for the clay and was home to a brickworks as a result; and with the exception of isolated groups of trees did not appear to have been treelined.

One further difference: the southern section, though a track snaking through the farm, was a permissive route for traffic other than that which was farm business.  The Avenue, on the other hand, had always been considered private (whether legally so is another matter) and gates were installed at both the Sandpit Lane and Hatfield Road ends.

The former BT building next to the railway, now Alban Away,  Today
part of an industrial estate and earlier a brick works and rubbish tip.

Today's Alban Way still intersects Ashley Road and demonstrates a further difference between the two sections.  But before feeling too satisfied that the avenue escaped the smoke and steam of railway tracks, it was a close call.  The Midland Railway's early iteration proposed a route which would have clipped the northern end of Beaumont Avenue and crossed in front of the former Marshalswick House.  Although Thomas Kinder, owner of Beaumonts, had not been found to have objected to the compulsory purchase of a small portion of his land, the Marten family certainly did, and as a result Beaumont Avenue retained its rural and ancient landscape.  No railway crossing the Avenue.  Same track, but quite a contrast.